thy or tend the loom. The
division of labor has closed many avenues for happiness and culture.
The time was when the village cobbler was primarily a citizen, and
only incidentally a shoemaker. In the old New England days the cobbler
owned his garden and knew the orchard; owned his horse and knew the
care of animals; had his special duties in relation to school and
church, and, therefore, was a student of all public questions. But
tending a machine that clinches tacks, cabins and confines the soul.
The man who begins as a citizen ends an appendage to a wheel. The life
of many becomes a treadmill existence. Year in and year out they tend
some spindle. Now this drudgery of modern life threatens happiness and
manhood. Therefore it was ordained that while the hand digs the mind
may soar.

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