t at some foundation which will not move. He will
know what he is about and what is great. He puts Caesar, Milton, and
Whitfield into his crucible; but that which went in Caesar comes out a
part of himself. The bold yet modest young chemist is egotistical. He
cannot be anybody else but John Smith. Why should he? Who knows yet what
it is to be John Smith? Napoleon and Washington are only playing his own
game for him, since he so easily understands and accepts their play. A
boy reads history as girls cut flowers from old embroidery to sew them
on a new foundation. They are interested in the new, and in the old only
for what they can make of it. So he sucks the blood of kings and
captains to help him fight his own battles. He reads of Bunker's Hill
and the Declaration of Independence with constant reference to the part
he shall take in the politics of the world. His motto is, _Sic semper
tyrannis_! Benjamin Franklin, and after him John Smith,--perhaps a
better man than he. We live on that _perhaps_. Every great man departed
has played out his last card, has taken all his chances. We are glad to
see his power limited and scaled up. Shakspeare, we say, did not know
everything; and here am I alone with the universe, nothing but a little
sleepiness between me and all that Shakspeare and Plato knew or did not
know. If I should be jostled out of my drowsiness, who can tell what may
be given me to see, to say, or to do? Let us make ready and get upon
some high ground from which we may overlook the work of the world; for
the secret of all mastery is dormant, yet breathing and stirring in you
and me.

Out of such material as we can gather we make a world in which we walk
continually up and down. In it we find friends and enemies, we love and
are loved, we travel and build. In it we are kings; we ordain and
arrange everything, and never come away worsted from any encounter. For
this sphere arises in answer to the practical question, What can I be
and do? It is an embodiment of the force that is in me. Every dreamer,
therefore, goes on to see himself among men and things which he can
understand and master, with which he can deal securely. The stable-boy
has hid an old volume among the straw, and he walks with Portia and
Desdemona while he grooms the horses. Already in his smock-frock he is a
companion for princes and queens. But the rich man's son, well born, as
we say, in the great house yonder, has one only ambition in life,--to
tu