citizen. Nor shall you find one hard-worked man caught to-morrow in
life's swirl who does not endure the strife, the rivalry and the
selfishness of the street with this gift divine. It is the noblest
instrument of the soul. Thereby are the heavens opened. Imagination is
the poor man's friend and saviour. Imagination is God whispering to
the soul what shall be when time and the divine resources have
accomplished their work upon man.

And when imagination has achieved for man, his progress, happiness,
and culture, it goes on to help him to gain personal worth and
character. Above every noble soul hangs a vision of things higher,
better and sweeter. It causes the best men even in their best moods to
feel that better things still are possible. By sweet visions it tempts
men upward, just as of old the bees were lured onward by the honey
dropped through the hunter's hands. The vision of a higher manhood
discontents men with to-day's achievement and takes the flavor out of
yesterday's victory. In such hours it is not enough that men have
bread and raiment, or are better than their fellows. The soul is
filled with nameless yearnings and longings. The deeper convictions,
long hidden, begin to stir and strain, even as in June the seed aches
with its hidden harvest.

Though the youth still pursues, he never overtakes his ideal. In the
process of transmutation into life the ideal is injured and dwarfed.
Just as the poet's vision is transcendently more beautiful than the
song he writes upon the page; as the artist's dream is a
glorious-creation, but his picture is only a photograph thereof; as
the musician's song or symphony is but an echo of the ethereal music
he heard in his soul, so every purpose and ideal is marred in the
effort to give it expression and embodiment.

These children of aspiration hold the secret of all progress for
society. Just as of old artists drew the outline of glowing and
glorious pictures, and then with bits of colored glass and precious
stones filled up the mosaic, causing angels and seraphs to stand forth
in lustrous beauty, so imagination lifts up before the youth its
glowing plans and purposes, and asks him to give himself to the
details of life in filling it up and perfecting a glorious character.
The patterns of life are only given upon that holy mount where, midst
clouds and darkness, dwell God and the higher imagination.

But if the imagination has its use, it has its abuse also. If visions