"Without vision the people perish"
Without a high ideal an individual never climbs. Keep your eyes on the
mountain top, and, though you may stumble and fall many times in the
ascent, though great bowlders, dense forests, and roaring torrents may
often bar the way, look right on, never losing sight of the light which
shines away up in the clear atmosphere of the mountain peak, and you
will ultimately reach your goal.
When the late Horace Maynard, LL.D., entered Amherst College, he
exposed himself to the ridicule and jibing questions of his
fellow-students by placing over the door of his room a large square of
white cardboard on which was inscribed in bold outlines the single
letter "V." Disregarding comment and question, the young man applied
himself to his work, ever keeping in mind the height to which he wished
to climb, the first step toward which was signified by the mysterious
"V."
Four years later, after receiving the compliments of professors and
students on the way he had acquitted himself as valedictorian of his
class, young Maynard called the attention of his fellow-graduates to
the letter over his door. Then a light broke in upon them, and they
cried out, "Is it possible that you had the valedictory in mind when
you put that 'V' over your door?"
"Assuredly I had," was the emphatic reply.
On he climbed, from height to height, becoming successively professor
of mathematics in the University of Tennessee, lawyer, member of
Congress, attorney-general of Tennessee, United States minister to
Constantinople, and, finally, postmaster-general.
Honorable ambition is the leaven that raises the whole mass of mankind.
Ideals, visions, are the stepping-stones by which we rise to higher
things.
"Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished ideal,
And longing molds in clay what life
Carves in the marble real;
"To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal,--
Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal."