THE late Archdeacon Hare was once, when tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, giving a lecture, when a cry of "Fire" was raised. Away rushed his pupils, and, forming themselves into a line between the building, which was close at hand, and the river, passed buckets from one to another. The tutor, quickly following, found them thus engaged; at the end of the line one youth was standing up to his waist in the river; he was delicate, consumptive looking.
"What!" cried Mr. Hare, "you in the water, Sterling? You, so liable to take cold!"
"Somebody must be in," responded the youth; "why not I, as well as another?"
The spirit of this answer is that of all great and generous doings. Cowardice, and coldness too, says, "Oh, somebody will do it!" and the speaker sits still; he is not the one to do what wants doing. But nobility of character, looking at necessary things, says, "Somebody must do it; why not I?" And the deed is done.—Selected.