The Meal and Real in Life. 



By Ella F. Flanders, DeWittville, N. Y. 



Although this is a very practical world, and the tendencies of 

 the men and women in it lean mainly toward the practical side; 

 yet sentiment is not a rare thing, and ideals are as numerous as 

 reals. 



We are all castle builders. All in youth had a fairy ship at 

 sea freighted with the brightest hopes and possibilities our youth- 

 ful fancy could picture, but to none of us perhaps has come the 

 realization of our fond day-dreams. Our castles may have crum- 

 bled into dust, and our ships, like the fairy phantom ship of old, 

 may still hang in the horizon, never advancing toward us. 



Our realizations have perhaps been very different from our 

 anticipations, yet for all this, our high ideals have urged us to 

 a higher plane of thought and action. Every result of import- 

 ance must exist in the mind before it can exist in reality. The 

 beautiful statue was an ideal hidden away in uncut marble until 

 the sculptor's chisel set it free. The poet's masterpiece was but 

 a floating dream until with patient art he brought it forth. 

 Columbus reared a castle and started in search of it. It was 

 only an aircastle when Morse pictured to himself the lightning, 

 carrying news from place to place, but through his effort it be- 

 came a reality. " Dreaming comes before labor, but labor alone 

 makes it worthy." Youth is the period when we live most in 

 the world of fancy and idealism. Henry W. Longfellow tells us 



" Each man's chimney is his golden milestone. 



Is the central point from which he measures every distance; 



Through the gateway of the world around him 



In his farthest wanderings still he sees it, 



Hears the talking flame, the answering night wind as he heard them 



When he sat with those who were but are not; 



Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion. 



Nor the march of the encroaching city drives an exile 



From the hearth of his ancestral homestead. 



We may build more splendid habitations. 



Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, 



But we cannot buy with gold ■ j i 



The old associations." I 



