But let us not forget that it is better for us, and better for the
world, that we dream, and that we tread the thorny paths, and climb
the weary steeps, and leave our bloody tracks behind in the pursuit
of our dreams. For in their extravagant conceptions lie the germs
of human government, and invention, and discovery; and from their
mysterious vagaries spring the motive power of the world's progress.
Our civilization is the evolution of dreams. The rude tribes of primeval
men dwelt in caves until some unwashed savage dreamed that damp caverns
and unholy smells were not in accord with the principles of hygiene.
It dawned upon his _mighty_ intellect that one flat stone would lie on
top of another, and that a little mud, aided by Sir Isaac Newton's law
of gravitation, would hold them together, and that walls could be built
in the form of a quadrangle. Here was the birth of architecture. And
thus, from the magical dreams of this unmausoleumed barbarian was
evolved the home, the best and sweetest evolution of man's civilisation.
John Howard Payne touched the tenderest chord that vibrates in the
great heart of all humankind when he gave to immortality his song of
"Home, Sweet Home;" and thank God, the grand mansions and palaces of the
rich do not hold all the happiness and nobility of this world. There
are millions of humble cottages where virtue resides in the warmth and
purity of vestal fires, and where contentment dwells like perpetual
summer.
The antediluvians plowed with a forked stick, with one prong for the
beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy
ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam
whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble
Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; genius wrought his dream
into steel and now the polished Oliver Chill slices the earth like a
hot knife plowing a field of Jersey butter, and the modern gang plow,
bearing upon its wheels the gloved and umbrella'd leader of the Populist
Party, plows up the whole face of the earth in a single day.
What a wonderful workshop is the brain of man! Its noiseless machinery
cuts, and carves, and moulds, in the imponderable material of ideas.
It works its endless miracles through the brawny arm of labor, and the
deft fingers of skill, and the world moves forward by its magic. Aladdin
rubbed his lamp and the shadowy genii of fable performed impossible
wonders. The dreamer of to-day rubs his fingers through his hair and the
genii of his intellect work miracles which eclipse the most extravagant
fantasies of the "Arabian Nights."
A dreamer saw the imprisoned vapor throw open the lid of a teakettle,
and lo! a steam engine came puffing from his brain. And now many a huge
monster of Corliss, beautiful as a vision of Archimedes and smooth in
movement as a wheeling planet, sends its thrill of life and power
through mammoth plants of humming machinery. The fiery courser of the
steel-bound track shoots over hill and plain, like a mid-night meteor
through the fields of heaven, outstripping the wind.
A dreamer carried about in his brain a great Leviathan. It was launched
upon the billows, and like some collossal swan the palatial steamship
now sweeps in majesty through the blue wastes of old ocean.
Six hundred years before Christ, some old Greek discovered electricity
by rubbing a piece of amber, and unable to grasp the mystery, he called
it soul. His discovery slept for more than two thousand years until it
awoke in the dreams of Galvani, and Volta, and Benjamin Franklin. In the
morning of the nineteenth century the sculptor and scientist, Morse, saw
in his dreams, phantom lightnings leap across continents, and oceans,
and felt the pulse of thunder beat as it came bounding over threads of
iron that girdled the earth. In each throb he read a human thought. The
electric telegraph emerged from his brain, like Minerva from the brow of
Jove, and the world received a fresh baptism of light and glory.
In a few more years we will step over the threshold of the twentieth
century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be
that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe
Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance
with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric
railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot,"
and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive
in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery
will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his
"kiss-o-phone" in New York, and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all
the delightful sensations of the "aforesaid and the same." I think some
Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and by an ultimate
concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to
carry a year's provisions in his vest pocket. The sucking dude will
store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department
of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train
load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat
Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty
horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their
axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels
them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the
battlefield will become so hot and unhealthy that,
"He who fights and runs away
Will never fight another day."
Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the
aluminium wings of the swift Pegassus of the air the light-hearted
society girl will sail among the stars, and
"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed,
Make love to the man in the moon."
The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald
headed; the women will run the Government--_and then I think the end of
time will be near at hand_.