imagination in flame, this is the golden moment. Each idea now
stands out clear cut as a cube of crystal, and colours of
unwonted richness are draping the fancy. Hence, at all hazards,
lay hold of this inspiration. Close the most interesting work;
leave the most fascinating society; heed neither food nor sleep
till it is secured.

For you this spirit may never breathe again. Let this moment
pass, and when you do invoke the intellect it is cold and barren,
and the heart that yesterday blazed with living fires holds
lifeless ashes now. It is not always when you have pointed your
pencils and spread the virgin page before you thought will come.
The ideas that have revolutionized the world came at times and in
places most unlooked for.

When musing on the swaying Sanctuary lamp during Benediction,
Galileo discovered the laws of the pendulum. Such a trifle as the
fall of an apple suggested the laws of gravitation to Newton; and
the first idea of the steam engine came to Watt while he was
watching the lid rising from the boiling kettle. During a royal
banquet the argument to crush the Manicheans grew on the great
mind of St. Thomas, and the king made his secretary write it down
on the spot. Had not these men trained themselves to admit and
welcome the angel visitant, no matter when or where he came, the
stagnant pool of the world's ignorance might have remained for
ever unstirred.

Your notes are now before you, some the offspring of original
thought and others culled from reading. The former require only
polishing and shaping, but the latter must pass through your own