is especially characteristic of the typical American. No matter how poor, or what his misfortune, he is confident, self-reliant, even defiant at fate, because he believes better days are coming. The clerk can live in a store of his own which his imagination builds. The poorest factory girl dreams of a beautiful home of her own. The humblest dream of power.
The ability to lift oneself instantly out of all perplexities, trials, troubles, and discordant environment, into an atmosphere of harmony and beauty and truth, is beyond price. How many of us would have heart enough, hope enough, and courage enough, to continue the struggle of life with enthusiasm if our power of dreaming were taken away from us?
It is this dreaming, this hoping, this constant expectancy of better things to come, that keeps up our courage, lightens our burdens, and makes clear the way.
I know a lady who has gone through the most trying and heartrending experiences for many years, and yet everybody who knows her marvels at her sweetness of temper, her balance of mind, and beauty of character. She says that she owes everything to her ability to dream; that she can at will lift herself out of the most discordant and trying conditions into a calm of absolute harmony and beauty, and come back to her work with a freshened mind and invigorated body.
The dreaming faculty, like every other faculty, may be abused. A great many people do nothing but dream. They spend all their energies in building air castles which they never try to make real; they live in an unnatural, delusive, theoretical atmosphere until the faculties become paralyzed from inaction.
It is a splendid thing to dream when you have the grit and tenacity of purpose and the resolution to match your dreams with realities, but dreaming without effort, wishing without putting forth exertion to realize the wish, undermines the character. It is only practical dreaming that counts,—dreaming coupled with hard work and persistent endeavor.
Just in proportion as we make our dreams realities, shall we become strong and effective. Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world.
Dreaming and making good, this was what John Harvard did when with his few hundred dollars he made Harvard College possible. The founding of Yale College with a handful of books was but a dream made good.
President Roosevelt owes everything to his dream of better conditions for humanity, of higher ideals; his dream of a larger, finer type of manhood; of better government, of a finer citizenship, of a larger and cleaner manhood and womanhood.
The child lives in dreamland. It creates a world of its own, and plays with the castles it builds. It traces pictures which are very real to it; it enjoys that which was never on sea or land, but which has a powerful influence in shaping its future life and character.
Do not stop dreaming. Encourage your visions and believe in them. Cherish your dreams and try to make them real. This tiling in us that aspires, that bids us to look up, that beckons us higher, is God-given. Aspiration is the hand that points us to the road that runs heavenward. As your vision is, so will your life be. Your better dream is the prophecy of what your life may be, ought to be.
The great thing is to try to fashion the life after the pattern shown us in the moment of our highest inspiration; to make our highest moment permanent
We are all conscious that the best we do is but a sorry apology for what we ought to do, might do. The average man is but a burlesque of the sublime man God intended him to be. We certainly were made for something larger, grander, and more beautiful than we are. We have a feeling that what we are is out of keeping with—does not fit—the larger, greater life-plan which the Creator patterned for us; that it is mean, sordid, stingy, and pinched compared with the pattern of that divine man shown us in the moment of our highest vision.
It is this creative power of the imagination, these dreams of the dreamers made good, that will ultimately raise man to his highest power; that will break down the barriers of caste, race, and creed, and make real the poet’s vision of the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
“The Golden Age lies onward, not behind.
The pathway through the past has led us up:
The pathway through the future will lead on,
And higher.”
Chapter VI.
The Spirit In Which You Work
IT ought not to be necessary to ask a man if he likes his work. The radiance of his face should tell that. His very buoyancy and pride in his task; his spirit of unbounded enthusiasm and zest, ought to show it. He ought to be so in love with his work that he finds his greatest delight in it; and this inward joy should light up his whole being.
A test of the quality of the individual is the spirit in which he does his work. If he goes to it grudgingly, like a slave under the lash; if he feels the drudgery in it; if his enthusiasm and love for it do not lift it out of commonness and make it a delight instead of a bore, he will never make a very great place for himself in the world.
The man who feels his life-yoke galling him; who does not understand why the bread-and-butter question could not have been solved by one great creative act, instead of every man’s being obliged to wrench everything he gets from nature through hard work; the man who does not see a beneficent design and a superb necessity in the principle that every one should earn his own living—has gotten a wrong view of life, and will never get the splendid results out of his vocation that were intended for him.
Multitudes of people do not half respect their work. They look upon it as a disagreeable necessity for providing bread and butter, clothing and shelter—as unavoidable drudgery, instead of as a great man builder, a great life university for the development of manhood and womanhood. They do not see the divinity in the spur of necessity which compels man to develop the best thing in him; to unfold his possibilities by his struggle to attain his ambition, to conquer the enemies of his prosperity and his happiness. They cannot see the curse in the unearned dollar, which takes the spur out of the motive. Work to them is sheer drudgery—an unmitigated evil. They cannot understand why the Creator did not put bread ready-made on trees. They do not see the stamina, the grit, the nobility, and the manhood in being forced to conquer what they get. No one can make a real success of his life when he is all the time grumbling or apologizing for what he is doing. It is a confession of weakness.
What a pitiable sight to see one of God’s noblemen, made to hold up his head and be a king, to be cheerful and happy and to radiate power, going about whining and complaining of his work, even deploring the fact that he should have to work at all! It is demoralizing to allow yourself to do a thing in a half-hearted, grudging manner.
There is a great adaptive power in human nature. The mind is wonderfully adjustive to different conditions; but you will not get the best results until your mind is settled, until you are resolved not only to like your work, but also to do it in the spirit of a master and not in that of a slave. Resolve that, whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it; that you will do it in the spirit of a conqueror, and so get the lesson and power out of it which come only to the conqueror.
Put the right spirit into your work. Treat your calling as divine—as a call from principle. If the thing itself be not important, the spirit in which you take hold of it makes all the difference in the
