Show till ill E N SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT by F A WALKER imagination I 1 SAT the other day in the studio of a great artist and watched him as he made ready to begin a picture As he placed the canvas upon the easel I 1 asked him what he be was to paint the ansiger answer that ho he made to me was so BO vivid and so BO strikingly told that I 1 almost seemed to see upon the blank canvas the finished work but I 1 knew what I 1 saw was only a dim counterpart of the thing that he be saw for in his imagination the whole picture was as plain in its form and as distinct in its colors in its then mental existence as it was later to be to thousands of admiring eyes e 0 this world would be a sad and desolate place without imagination art would falter and science would dry up and blow away imagination Is s the real mother of accomplishment it if the boy did not vision tho the man did not imagine himself as he will be when he grows up all the great incentives of youth would vanish and all its endeavor disappear nothing Is so exhilarating a spur to endeavor as the imagination of what will result from effort 0 0 0 it Is the imaginings of what money will buy for us in necessities comforts and luxuries that keep us keenly at its earning and conscientiously at its saving it Is the imagining ot of what may be the result that keeps the chemist in his laboratory through night hours or the student at his books when nature would send him to bed imagination helps us to live and it not infrequently causes us to dle die A felon in an english prison who had been Fenten sentenced ced to death was mode made the subject of an experiment which showed the power of imagined suffering ue ile was nas blindfolded and it was explained to him that in the place of the usual form of execution he be was to be bled to death his arm was bared and across the large vein on the inside of the elbow joint was vias drawn but NIt without hout making any wound the edge of a knife immediately there was caused to flow down hla his arm a stream of blood warm water attendants counted his pulse and carried on a whispered conversation about the evidences of falling vitality slowly uie the man grew weaker weaber his flesh lost its color and about the time that a man would have bled to death from such a wound actually flirted the prisoner died from pure halt half our ills are no more substantial than han was the cut in the prisoners firm arm but we like him su suffer affer through our imaginations all tile the pains of reality said napoleon rules the world imagination ruled napoleon he lived on the vision of himself as conqueror of europe ile he imagined his battles long jong before the first gun of conflict sounded and though he be dwelt on victory he saw in his imagination waterloo as plainly as marengo or austerlitz swifter than light the imagination travels gravels in an instant of time to the outermost star of our universe and returns as quickly as it went it defies time and annihilates space fir lace it disregards probability and overlooks all ail laws it lias has pioneered every progress that man has made since the world begun begrin and multi multiplied pIled his happiness and his ills alike it Is one function which man possesses which lie does doeg not share with forms of life lower than himself there are many macy animals who give proof of having the power of thought even of reason there Is not one that has ever shown the he slightest evidence of being able to imagine anything outside I 1 of it has already experienced do you cultivate your imagination do you guide it along right and useful lines and direct it into result getting endeavors it if you do not you are wasting a power that god bestowed on you when ile he said let them man have dominion over all the earth imagination will help you to have that dominion it if you use it rightly it will help the weakest tiling thing in all tile the earth to have dominion over you it if you use it wrongly case base your imaginings on truth give them a foundation of fact a and n d they will prove useful and fruitful profitable and affa worth while copyright |