Ancestral piety forbids the digging of the hills for gold or silver or any other treasure. What are the living and what is yellow gold compared with the sweet repose of my father’s ghost? Away with all sordid visions and leave the hills in peace!—James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”
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ANCESTRAL EXAMPLE
It was the custom of the primitive Romans to preserve in the halls of their houses the images of all the illustrious men whom their families had produced. These images are supposed to have consisted of a mask exactly representing the countenance of each deceased individual, accompanied with habiliments of like fashion with those worn in his time, and with the armor, badges, and insignia of his offices and exploits; all so disposed around the sides of the hall as to present, in the attitude of living men, the long succession of the departed; and thus to set before the Roman citizen, whenever he entered or left the house, the venerable array of his ancestors revived in this imposing similitude. Whenever, by a death in the family, another distinguished member of it was gathered to his fathers, a strange and awful procession was formed. The ancestral masks, including that of the newly deceased, were fitted upon the servants of the family, selected of the size and appearance of those whom they were intended to represent, and drawn up in solemn array to follow the funeral train of the living mourners, first to the market-place, where the public eulogium was pronounced, and then to the tomb. As he thus moved along, with all the great fathers of his name quickening, as it were, from their urns, to enkindle his emulation, the virtuous Roman renewed his vows of respect to their memory, and his resolution to imitate their fortitude, frugality, and patriotism.—Edward Everett.
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Ancestry—See [Pedigree].
ANCHOR, AN
Every ship has an anchor, and there are times when the safety of the ship depends on its right use of its anchors. When I was a boy in Constantinople, an American captain visited our house. He told us that his ship was anchored in an exposed harbor in one of the islands of the Ægean, when a violent storm broke upon them. Both of the anchors which they had down began to drag, and it was only a question of time when they would be cast ashore. They had one little anchor still unused, and tho they did not hope much good could come from dropping it they took the chance. To their great surprize and equal delight, tho the two larger anchors would not hold, the smaller one held, and they rode out the storm in safety. When they came to weigh the anchors, the two large ones came up easily, but the smaller one came with great difficulty. When at last it appeared above the surface of the water, lo and behold, the fluke of the anchor had caught in the ring of a large man-of-war’s anchor that had been lost there long before! The man-of-war’s anchor had been embedded in the soil, and this accounted for the fact that the little anchor held.
Every man voyaging on the ocean of life ought to have an anchor. The apostle speaks about a good hope, which he says we have as an anchor sure and stedfast entering into the unseen, which is within the veil.—A. F. Schauffler, The Christian Herald.
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