had always thought of his manhood as a matter of years. He had said to
himself: "when I am twenty-one, I will be a man." He did not know,
then, that twenty-one years--that indeed three times twenty-one
years--cannot make a man. He did not know, then, that men are made of
other things than years.

I cannot tell you the man's name, nor the names of his parents, nor
his exact age, nor just where he lived, nor any of those things. For
my story, such things are of no importance whatever. But this is of
the greatest importance: as the man, for the first time, stood face to
face with Life and, for the first time, realized his manhood, his
manhood life began in Dreams.

It is the dreams of life that, at the beginning of life, matter. Of
the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life, Dreams are first.

It was green fruit time. From the cherry tree that grew in the upper
corner of the garden next door, close by the hedge that separated the
two places, the blossoms were gone and the tiny cherries were already
well formed. The nest, that a pair of little brown birds had made that
spring in the hedge, was just empty, and, from the green laden
branches of the tree, the little brown mother was calling anxious
advice and sweet worried counsel to her sons and daughters who were
trying their new wings.

In the cemetery on the hill, beside a grave over which the sod had
formed thick and firm, there was now another grave--another grave so
new that on it no blade of grass had started--so new that the yellow
earth in the long rounded mound was still moist and the flowers that
tried with such loving, tender, courage, to hide its nakedness were