aborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you find
Mr.----, the rigger, and Mr.----, the sailmaker, and tell them I want
them immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and
to-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you
can, and hire them to work for me." And Mr. A. himself sallied forth to
provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o'clock
that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river,
clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in large
squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. The
roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers'
mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were
passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife,
sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an
unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before night
the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by
the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days,
their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and
everything ready for them to go to sea.

Thus Mr. A. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports.
Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors
spoke depreciatingly of his "good luck." But, as the writer from whom we
get the story says, Mr. A. was equal to his opportunity, and this was
the secret of his good fortune.

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and
supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward,
she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money to
purchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood
of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamond
bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred
dollars, but did not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could
only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more
than diamond bracelets, in power to do good.

In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four
out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand,
and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young man
who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do
bett