While Henry Clay's hands were hoeing corn in that field in Kentucky, through his imagination the young orator was standing in the halls of Congress. What orations he wrote! What arguments he fashioned! Each time his hoe cut down a weed, his mind with an argument hewed down an opponent. Never was there a tool for hoeing corn like unto the imagination! Christine Nilsson tells that once she toiled as a flower girl at the country fairs in Sweden. But all the time she delved she was dreaming, and by her very dreams making herself strong against the day when she would charm vast audiences with celestial music. What battles the plowboys have fought in dreams! What orations they have pronounced! What reforms they have achieved! What tools invented! What books written! What business reared! Thus the imagination shortens the hours of labor and sweetens toil. While the body tires, the soul soars and sings. This young foreigner newly arrived in our city digs downward with his spade, but his imagination works upward into the realm of the invisible. He endures the ditch and the spade through foresight of the day when his playmate will come over the sea; when together they will own a little house, and have a garden with vines and flowers, with a little path leading down to "the spring where the water bubbles out day and night like a little poem from the heart of the earth;" when they will have a little competence, so that the sweet babe shall not want for knowledge. By that dream the youth sustains his loneliness and poverty; by that dream he conquers his vices and passions; at last through that dream he is lifted up to the rank of a patriot and worthy 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.