Dare to Dream. The great colleges turn out thousands of graduates each year, and the great newspapers have much sport ridiculing them in funny pictures. Every great man was once a boy with a dream, and that dream came true because the boy had pep that made him stick to his ambition and kept him from being discouraged because of ridicule or obstacles. Thomas Carlyle, the poor Scotch tutor, dreamed he wanted to be a great author. His clothes were threadbare, his poverty apparent. Friends taunted and ridiculed him until, goaded to indignation, he cried: "I have better books in me than you have ever read." The crowd laughed incredulously and said: "Poor fellow, he's batty." Carlyle stuck to his dream and the world has the "History of Frederick the Great" and the "French Revolution" and "Sartor Resartus." When he had finished the manuscript of the "French Revolution," a careless maid built a fire with it. He wasn't discouraged, but went to Bonaparte in the garden of his military school dreamed of being a great general. He stuck to his dream and he realized his hopes. Joseph Pulitzer, a poor emigrant, crawled in a cellar way in New York to sleep, and he dreamed of owning a great newspaper. His dream came true, and the newspaper is printed in a building erected on the spot where he dreamed in the cellar way. Livingston dreamed of exploring darkest Africa; his dream came true. Edison dreamed of great electrical discoveries. His monument is Menlo Park with its great laboratories. Ford dreamed of making an automobile for the purse-limited masses—he was jeered; to-day the world cheers him. My friend, Bert Perrine, was chucked off a stage in the middle of Idaho's great sage brush desert. He said to the driver, "Some day I'll own that stage and I'll use it for a chicken house." He dreamed and schemed, and to-day the desert is the famous Twin Falls country, blossoming like a rose. And on his beautiful ranch at Blue Lakes, that old stage is used for a chicken house. Rockefeller dreamed, Lincoln dreamed—so did Garfield, Wilson, Grant, Clay, Webster, Marshall Field, Richard W. Sears and all the other men who have done things worth while in the world. The great West is the result of dreams come true. Dream on, my boy; hitch your wagon to a star and stay hitched. That dream and that determination are the things that are to carry you over obstacles, past thorny ways, and through criticism, jeers and ridicule. Your time will come. Dream and scheme, and make your ideals materialize into living, pulsating realities. |