are but so many ambitious waves breaking up from that great sea of
dreamy speculation that has spread over your soul from its first start
into the realm of Consciousness.

No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so blind, that they cannot
catch food for dreams. Each little episode of life is full, had we but
the perception of its fulness. There is no such thing as blank in the
world of thought. Every action and emotion have their development
growing and gaining on the soul. Every affection has its tears and
smiles. Nay, the very material world is full of meaning, and by
suggesting thought is making us what we are and what we will be.

The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my balcony is calling up
to me this moment a world of memories that reach over half my lifetime,
and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows.
The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat is full of buds and
blossoms; and each bud and blossom is a token of promise that has
issues covering life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine
beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow,--glistening upon the leaves,
and playing in delicious waves of warmth over the reeking earth,--is
lighting both heart and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand
thoughts of what has been and of what will be. The meadow stretching
away under its golden flood,--waving with grain, and with the feathery
blossoms of the grass, and golden buttercups, and white, nodding
daisies,--comes to my eye like the lapse of fading childhood, studded
here and there with the bright blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with
the flush of health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the soul.
The blue hills beyond, with deep-blue shadows gathered in their bosom,
lie before me like mountains of years, over which I shall climb through
shadows to the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows of Death.