THE ANCHOR TO MANY LIVES.

I will present it in the following pages.  But let me assure you that if you have the truest courage—­the kind that this young man had—­you will not need the quality which I will next take up.  Hope rides in a palace-car, along the railroad, and over the tremendous bridges which Courage has constructed.

[Illustration]

HOPE.

     Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light,
       Adorns and cheers the way: 
     And still, as darker grows the night,
       Emits a brighter ray.—­Goldsmith.

Hope is the best part of our riches.  For it alone reaches further than any other—­off into the world which is to come.  But I am speaking to you of the practical advantages of hope.  Bacon says:  “Hope is leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold.”  It has been most beautifully said by Hillard that the shadow of human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope.  Shakspeare says the miserable have no other medicine.  “Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored, since there is often a heavy balance against him.”  Now to make his account good in the First National Bank of Experience, what should Hope do?  He plainly should begin the deposit of probabilities to draw against.  Walter Scott says:  “Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears,” and I should think his drafts would be honored just so far as they were drawn with circumspection.  “Folly ends” writes Cowper “where genuine hope begins.”  But where there is no hope there can be no endeavor, so whether it exist in superabundance or not let us cultivate it as one of the loveliest of the flowers of life, as absolutely the sweetest perfume that ever burns in the Golden Censer.  Let me tell you how

HOPE ALONE SAVED THE LIFE

of one of the finest young men in the land.  He was the son of a wealthy wine merchant who had failed in business near Bath-Easton, England.  Like many other lads, he felt the sting of circumstances which promised to alter, and without good advice got ready to come to America.  He was well trained in the wine trade, and supposed that employment would at once open to him.  He brought over two guns, two revolvers, a field glass, a sword, much valuable jewelry, about twelve suits of clothes and not a very large amount of money—­possibly three hundred dollars.  After seeing Boston and New York, he “left for the plains,” and

ARRIVED IN CHICAGO ON CHRISTMAS,