rroundings, which were ship cargoes.

"The empty bags do not stand up," he said.

"Well, what do you infer from that?" asked Jamie.

Silence Dogood did not answer, but the thought in his mind was evident.
It was simply this: that, come what would in life, he would not fail. He
put his hand on Uncle Benjamin's shoulder, for who does not long to
reach out his hand toward the fire in the cold, and to touch the form
that entemples the most sympathetic heart? He dreamed there on the sea
wall, where the loons seemed to laugh, and his dreams came true. Every
attainment in life is first a dream.

Silence Dogood, dream on! Add intelligence to intelligence, virtue to
virtue, benevolence to benevolence, faith to faith, for so ascends the
ladder of life.

Uncle Benjamin was right. Let no man be laughed out of ideals that are
true, because they do not reach their development at once.

Many young people stand in the situation in which we find young Franklin
now. Many older people do in their early work. England laughed at
Boswell, but he came to be held as the prince of biographers, and his
methods as the true manner of picturing life and making the past live in
letters.

People with a purpose who have been laughed at are many in the history
of the world. From Romulus and the builders of the walls of Jerusalem to
Columbus, ridicule makes a long record, and the world does not seem to
grow wiser by its mistakes. Even Edison, in our own day, was ridiculed,
when a youth, for his abstractions, and his efforts were ignored by
scientists.

Two generations ago a jeering company of people, uttering comical jests
under the cover of their hands, went down to a place on the banks of the
Hudson to see, as they said, "a crazy man attempt to move a boat by
steam." They returned with large eyes and free lips. _That boat moved._

In the early part of the century a young Scotchman named Carlyle laid
before the greatest of English scholars and critics a manuscript
entitled Sartor Resartus. The great critic read the manuscript and
pronounced it "the stupidest stuff that he ever set eyes on." He laughed
at a manuscript that became one of the literary masterpieces of the
century. A like experience had Milton, when he once said that he would
write a poem that should be the glory of his country.

A young graduate named Longfellow wrote poems that came to him amid the
woods and fields, and published them in newspapers and magazines, and
gathered