I do not think he had ever had a home. Possibly, away back beyond the years a dim, sweet memory of a hearthstone and a gable roof with the rain pattering on it, and a cupboard and a clock, and a deep, still well, came to him like an echo or a dream. Be this as it may, our hero, crushed into the very mud by poverty—upon knees and hands beneath his burden—fighting like a beast for his daily food—shut out inexorably from all suggestions of home—embittered by starvation—with his faculties chained down apparently to the dreary problem of to-day—nevertheless did lift his eyes into the gray future, and set his soul upon a home. This is a mere fragment—a bare synopsis of the opening of what was one of the most eloquent and pathetic lectures ever delivered from the platform. It was a beautiful idyll of home—an appeal, a eulogy—a glimpse, as it were, of the passionate devotion with which he regarded his own home. Here is another fragment of the lecture that follows closely after the foregoing: After a month’s struggle, Mr. Pitts purchased the ground on which his home was to be built. It was an indescribable hillside, bordering on the precipitous. A friend of mine remarked that “it was such an aggravating piece of profanity that the owner gave Mr. Pitts five dollars to accept the land and the deed to it.” This report I feel bound to correct. Mr. Pitts purchased the land. He gave three dollars for it. The deed having been properly recorded, Mr. Pitts went to work. He borrowed a shovel, and, perching himself against his hillside, began loosening the dirt in front of him, and spilling it out between his legs, reminding me, as I passed daily, of a giant dirt-dauber. At length (and not very long either, for his remorseless desire made his arms fly like a madman’s) he succeeded in scooping an apparently flat place out of the hillside and was ready to lay the foundation of his house.