HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
How long would it take to get the world's day-by-day news but for such dreamers as Field?
When William Murdock, at the close of the eighteenth century, dreamed of lighting London by means of coal gas conveyed to buildings in pipes, even Sir Humphry Davy sneeringly asked, “Do you intend taking the dome of St. Paul's for a gasometer?" Sir Walter Scott, too, ridiculed the idea of lighting London by “smoke," but he lived to use this same smoke-dream to light his castle at Abbottsford. “What!" said the wise scientists, “a light without a wick? Impossible!"
How people laughed at die dreamer, Charles Goodyear, who struggled with hardships for eleven long years while trying to make india-rubber of practical use! See him in prison for debt, still dreaming, while pawning his clothes and his wife's jewelry to get a little money to keep his children from starving! Note his sublime courage and devotion to his vision even when without money to bury a dead child; while his five other children were near starvation, and his neighbors were denouncing him as insane!
Women called Elias Howe a fool and “crank" and condemned him for neglecting his family to dream of a machine which has proved a blessing to millions of their sex.
The great masters are always idealists, seers of visions. The sculptor is a dreamer who sees the statue in the rough block before he strikes a blow with his chisel. The artist sees a vision of the finished painting in all its perfection and beauty of coloring and form before he touches a brush to the canvas.
Every palace, every beautiful structure, is first the dream of the architect. It had no previous existence in reality. The building came out of his ideal before it was made real. Sir Christopher Wren saw Saint Paul’s Cathedral in all its magnificent beauty before the foundations were laid. It was his dream which revolutionized the architecture of London.
It was the dreaming Baron Haussmann who made Paris the most beautiful city in the world.
Think what we owe the beauty dreamers for making our homes and our parks so attractive! Yet there are thousands of practical men in New York to-day who, if they could have their way, would cut Central Park up into lots and cover it with business blocks.
The achievements of every successful man are but the realized visions of his youth, his dreams of bettering his condition, of enlarging his power.
Our homes are the dreams that began with lovers and their efforts to better their condition; the dreams of those who once lived in huts and in log cabins.
The modern luxurious railway train is the dream of those who rode in the old stagecoach.
Not more than a dozen years ago the horseless carriage, the manufacture of which now promises to make one of the largest businesses in the world, was considered by most people in the same light as is the airship to-day. But there has recently been an exhibition of these “dreams” in Madison Square Garden, New York, on a scale so vast in the suggestiveness of its possibilities as to stagger credulity.
Half a dozen years since, this invention was looked upon as a mere toy, a fad for a few millionaires. Twelve years ago there was not a single factory in America making cars for the market. Fourteen years ago there were only five horseless vehicles in this country, and they had been imported at extravagant prices. To-day there are over a hundred thousand in actual use. Instead of being toy for millionaires, the automobile is now being used in place of horses by thousands of people with ordinary incomes.
This dream is already helping us to solve the problem of crowded streets. It is proving a great educator, as well as a health giver, by tempting people into the country. The average man will ultimately, through its full realization, practically travel in his own private car. In fact this dream is becoming one of the greatest joys and blessings that has ever come to humanity.
It was the wonderful dream in steel of Carnegie, Schwab, and their associates, together with that of the elevator creator, that made the modern city with its sky-scrapers possible.
What do we not owe to our poet dreamers, who like Shakespeare, have taught us to see the uncommon in the common, the extraordinary in the ordinary?
The divinest heritage of man is the capacity to dream. It matters not how much we have to suffer to-day, if we believe there is a better to-morrow. Even “stone walls do not a prison make” to those who can dream. Who would rob the poor of this dreaming faculty, that takes the drudgery out of their dry, dreary occupations? Who would deprive them of the luxuries which they enjoy in their dreams of a better and brighter future, of a fuller education, of more comforts for those dear to them.
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better to-morrow.
Dreaming 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