“Hope for the Lost.” Charles Anderson was the son of a sailor. His father was drowned at sea. Charles was left an orphan, in a seaport town in England. Having no one to take care of him, he got in with bad boys, and grew up an idle, careless, swearing, drunken young man. In a drunken spree one night, he and his companions broke into a house and robbed it. He was taken to prison, tried, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales. After his arrival there, thinking that he was unjustly punished, he became sulky, obstinate, and rebellious. He cared for no rules. He minded no orders, but did just as he pleased. For his bad conduct he was flogged again and again. But punishment did him no good. He grew worse and worse. He became so thoroughly bad and unmanageable that at last he was sentenced to receive three hundred lashes on his back, and to be chained for two years to a barren rock that stood by itself in the middle of the harbor of Sydney. The wretched man was fastened by his waist to this rock, with a chain twenty-six feet long. He had irons on his legs and had hardly a rag to cover him. His only bed was a hollow place scooped out in the rock. He had no other shelter than a wooden lid, with holes bored in it. This was locked over him at night and removed in the morning. If he had been a wild beast, instead of a man, he could hardly have been treated worse. His food was pushed to him once a day, in a box, with a long pole. Sometimes people going by in boats, would throw him pieces of bread or biscuit. But no one was allowed to go near him or speak to him. Thus he spent two long years, a prisoner on that lonely rock. Of course, he grew no better, but worse, under such treatment. When his time was out, and he was released from the rock, he behaved so badly that very soon he was taken up again, and sent a prisoner to Norfolk Island, to work in chains for the rest of his life.