only of that dull, aching, loneliness--conscious only of that heavy
weight of pain.

A mile or more away, beyond the fields, a moving column of smoke from
a locomotive lifted itself into the sky above the tree tops and
streamed back a long, dark, banner. As the column of smoke moved
steadily on toward the distant horizon, the young man on the hilltop
watched it listlessly. Then, as his mind outran the train to the
cities that lay beyond the line of the sky, his eyes cleared, his
countenance brightened, his thoughts went outward toward the great
world where great men toil mightily; and the long, dark, banner of
smoke that hung above the moving train became to him as a flag of
battle leading swiftly toward the front. Eagerly now he
watched--watched until, far away, the streaming column of smoke passed
from sight around a wooded hill and faint and clear through the still
air--a bugle call to his ears--came the long challenging whistle.

Then it was that he realized his manhood--knew that he was a man--and
understood that manhood is not a matter of only twenty-one years. And
then it was--as he sat there alone on the brow of the little hill with
his boyhood years dead behind him and the years of his manhood
before--that his manhood life began, even as the manhood life of every
man really begins, with his Dreams.

Indeed it is true that all life really begins in dreams. Surely the
lover dreams of his mistress--the maiden of her mate. Surely mothers
dream of the little ones that sleep under their hearts and fathers
plan for their children before they hold them in their arms. Every
work of man is first conceived in the worker's soul and wrought out
first in his dreams. And the wondrous world itself, with its myriad