In his vision, he could see railroads and street cars, stone pavements and brick houses covering the “patch” with teeming life. Poor Henry, he was not a fool; he was too wise. For there are two men for whom the world never has any use; one is the fool and the other the philosopher. The fool believes that there is nothing but today; the wise man thinks that there is nothing but tomorrow. So the fool toils and the wise man dreams, and the mediocre man reaps the harvest—reaps the harvest born of the poor man’s work and the wise man’s dreams. When William Henry bought this patch, he had a vision of a time when relieved from business cares, he would build a house like the one his father owned, only on a larger scale. He would have a garden, such as it seemed to him was planted behind his father’s house. He would have a barn with horses, and cows that gave real milk, and a chicken house where real eggs were laid, and then, still further on in the magical future that he knew was in store for the city that he loved, he saw his “patch” cut up into building lots and covered with stores and factories and houses built of brick and stone and standing firm and brave to verify his faith and dreams. So Sunday after Sunday he drove to his “Farm”, week by week he carried out his neighbors and his friends. He planted trees and he dug a well. He worked and planned and planted and dreamed out on his “patch” beyond the great town ever reaching farther and farther toward the cherished spot. Well, the dreams and plans of man all go for naught in the presence of the blind forces that control the world, and one day Henry was startled by the cry of fire. In the twinkling of an eye his warehouse was in flames and all of his tobacco at once turned into smoke, without so much as the aid of a single pipe. When Henry awoke from his stupor, all Chicago was a smoldering heap of ashes, and he was a ruined man. The only thing that escaped the flames was the little green patch so far away on the prairies that even the fire scorned to search it out. Henry no longer had the strength and energy of twenty years before, but he did the best he could. He built a little cigar store in place of the great warehouse that was once his pride. He still went back and forth on Sundays to his patch of ground, and now he dreamed only of a little house out there on the farm where he might keep a cow and some chickens, and return to the simple life that his childhood years had known. But there was one man who found his patch, and this was the tax gatherer. No land was ever yet too far away for him. Year by year, the assessor put a value on his farm, and the little cigar store could not yield the revenue to pay. Of course, he never dreamed of selling the land to some one else; no one does. Deep in the soul of man is planted the old inborn desire to own a portion of the earth.