Three or four lads are standing in the channel below the great Natural Bridge of Virginia. They see hundreds of names carved in the limestone buttresses, and resolve to add theirs to the number. This done, one of them is seized with the mad ambition of carving his name higher than the highest there! His companions try to dissuade him from attempting so dangerous a feat, but in vain. He is a wild, reckless youth; and afraid now to yield, lest he should be thought a coward, he carves his way up and up the limestone rock, till he can hear the voices, but not the words of his terror-stricken playmates.
One of them runs off to the village, and tells the boy’s father of his perilous situation. Others go for help in other directions; and ere long there are hundreds of people standing in the rocky channel below, and hundreds on the bridge above, all holding their breath, and awaiting the fearful catastrophe. The poor boy can just distinguish the tones of his father, who is shouting with all the energy of despair,—"William! William! don’t look down! Your mother, and Henry, and Harriet are all here praying for you! Don’t look down! Keep your eyes towards the top!"
The boy does not look down. His eye is fixed towards heaven, and his young heart on Him who reigns there. He grasps again his knife. He cuts another niche, and another foot is added to the hundreds that remove him from the reach of human help from below.