I was not alone.

Close beside me, half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel.

A little boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.
"What ails you ?" asked the boy at length.

"What makes you lie there ?" The prostrate groveller struggled half-way up, exhibiting the bloated and filthy countenance of a drunkard.

He made two or three efforts to get upon his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled forward upon his face.
"What are you doing there ?" inquired the boy.
"I'm taking comfort," he muttered, with his mouth in the dirt.
Taking his comfort! There he lay,--squalid and loathsome under the bright heaven,--an imbruted man.