"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one
of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history
was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of
the greatest men?"

"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things
in spite of it; but through it, never."

"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals.
He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and
measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may
reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes,
yet he will neither see nor know of its existence. His foot-rule won't
reach it, and he has no eyes. Imagination! it was the logic of the
gods--the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible.
By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in
darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages.
Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all
great discoverers."

The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to you,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"

"Such an orator as Brutus is--cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather
not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark
Antony."

"And yet Brutus has been quoted and held up by poets and orators as a
sublime example of virtue and patriotism, young man!"