grow upon the same bush. His
task may be doomed to failure, but that youth at least understands
that thought turned the wild rice into wheat; thought turned the sweet
briar into the crimson rose; brains mixed the pigments for Paul
Veronese, and gave the canvas worth a few florins the value of tens of
thousand of dollars. Already wise thoughts have turned the barbarian
into a gentleman and citizen, and some glad day thoughts will crown
man with the attributes and qualities of God.

Of old, the Greek philosopher described the origin of man. One day
Ceres, in crossing a stream, saw a human face emerging from the soil.
It was the face of a man. Standing by this earth-born creature, the
goddess extricated his head and chest; but left his legs fastened in
the soil. Now, the invisible friends that free man from his earth
fetters are those divine visitors called ideas and thoughts. God hath
made thoughts to be golden chariots, in which the soul is swept upward
into the heavenly heights.

When thoughts have sown man's pathway with happiness and peace they go
on to determine character and futurity. Each life memorable for
goodness and nobility has for its motive power some noble thought.
Each hero has climbed up to immortality upon those golden rounds
called good thoughts. Here is that cathedral spirit, John Milton. In
his loneliness and blindness his mind was his kingdom. He loved to
think of things true and pure and of good report. Oft at midnight upon
the poet's ear there fell the sound of celestial music, that afterward
he transposed into his "Paradise Regained." Dying, it was given him to
proudly say: "I am not one of those who have disgraced beauty of
sentiment by deformity of conduct, nor the maxims of the freeman by
the actions of the slave, but by the grace of God, I have kept my soul
unsullied." Here is the immortal Bunyan, spending his best years in
Bedford jail because he insisted on giving men the message God had
first given him; but he, too, opened his mind only to good thoughts.
For him, also, dawned the heavenly vision. As the prison doors opened
before Peter and the angel, so the dungeon walls parted before his
thoughts. Walking about in glad freedom, he crossed the portals of the
Palace Beautiful. From its marble steps he saw afar off the Delectable
Mountains. Hard by ran the River of the Water of Life. The breezes of
the hills of Paradise cooled his hot temples and lifted his hair. His
regal thoughts crowned