continually inspired by expectation. Every effort he makes
is made in the conviction of possibility and the light of
hope. This is the heart of ambition and the spring of toil.
It is the balm which he applies to the wounds of misfortune.
It is the key with which he tries the wards of nature. And
from the morning of life to its last twilight he is always
looking. forward. The saddest spectacle of all--sadder even
than pain, and bereavement, and death --is a man void of
hope. The most abject people is a hopeless people, in whose
hearts the memories of the past, and the pulses of endeavor,
and the courage of faith are dead, and who crouch by their
own thresholds and the crumbling tombstones of their fathers,
and take the tyrant's will, without an incentive, and without
even a dream. The most intense form in which misery can
express itself is in the phrase, "I have nothing to live
for." And he who can actually say, and who really feels
this, is dead, and covered with the very pall and darkness of
calamity. But few, indeed, are they who can, with truth, say
this.

But if hope or expectation is such a vital element of human
experience, so does disappointment have its part in the
mechanism of things, and, as we shall presently see, its
wise and beneficial part. For, after all, how few things
correspond with the forecast of expectation! To be sure,
some results transcend our hope; but how many fall below it,
--balk it, -- turn out exactly opposite to it.! Among those
who meet with disappointments in life, there are those who
are expecting impossibilities, -- whose expectations are
inordinate, -- are more than the nature of things will