up the broken strands of a life-work, to look bravely toward the
future, and proceed undaunted on our way. But what, to our eyes, may
seem hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success. It
may contain in its debris the foundation material of a mighty purpose,
or the revelation of new and higher possibilities.

Some years ago, it was proposed to send logs from Canada to New York,
by a new method. The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind great
logs together by cables and iron girders and to tow the cargo as a
raft. When the novel craft neared New York and success seemed assured,
a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the tempest, the iron bands
snapped like icicles and the angry waters scattered the logs far and
wide. The chief of the Hydrographic Department at Washington heard of
the failure of the experiment, and at once sent word to shipmasters the
world over, urging them to watch carefully for these logs which he
described; and to note the precise location of each in latitude and
longitude and the time the observation was made.

Hundreds of captains, sailing over the waters of the earth, noted the
logs, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean, in the South Seas--
for into all waters did these venturesome ones travel. Hundreds of
reports were made, covering a period of weeks and months. These
observations were then carefully collated, systematized and tabulated,
and discoveries were made as to the course of ocean currents that
otherwise would have been impossible. The loss of the Joggins raft was
not a real failure, for it led to one of the great discoveries in
modern marine geography and navigation.

In our superior knowledge we are disposed to speak in a patronizing
tone of the follies of the alchemists of old. But their failure to