But let us not forget that it is better for us, and better for the world, that we dream, and that we tread the thorny paths, and climb the weary steeps, and leave our bloody tracks behind in the pursuit of our dreams. For in their extravagant conceptions lie the germs of human government, and invention, and discovery; and from their mysterious vagaries spring the motive power of the world's progress. Our civilization is the evolution of dreams. The rude tribes of primeval men dwelt in caves until some unwashed savage dreamed that damp caverns and unholy smells were not in accord with the principles of hygiene. It dawned upon his mighty intellect that one flat stone would lie on top of another, and that a little mud, aided by Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravitation, would hold them together, and that walls could be built in the form of a quadrangle. Here was the birth of architecture. And thus, from the magical dreams of this unmausoleumed barbarian was evolved the home, the best and sweetest evolution of man's civilisation.

John Howard Payne touched the tenderest chord that vibrates in the great heart of all humankind when he gave to immortality his song of "Home, Sweet Home;" and thank God, the grand mansions and palaces of the rich do not hold all the happiness and nobility of this world. There are millions of humble cottages where virtue resides in the warmth and purity of vestal fires, and where contentment dwells like perpetual summer.

The antediluvians plowed with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; genius wrought his dream into steel and now the polished Oliver Chill slices the earth like a hot knife plowing a field of Jersey butter, and the modern gang plow, bearing upon its wheels the gloved and umbrella'd leader of the Populist Party, plows up the whole face of the earth in a single day.

What a wonderful workshop is the brain of man! Its noiseless machinery cuts, and carves, and moulds, in the imponderable material of ideas. It works its endless miracles through the brawny arm of labor, and the deft fingers of skill, and the world moves forward by its magic. Aladdin rubbed his lamp and the shadowy genii of fable performed impossible wonders. The dreamer of to-day rubs his fingers through his hair and the genii of his intellect work miracles which eclipse the most extravagant fantasies of the "Arabian Nights."

A dreamer saw the imprisoned vapor throw open the lid of a teakettle, and lo! a steam engine came puffing from his brain. And now many a huge monster of Corliss, beautiful as a vision of Archimedes and smooth in movement as a wheeling planet, sends its thrill of life and power through mammoth plants of humming machinery. The fiery courser of the steel-bound track shoots over hill and plain, like a mid-night meteor through the fields of heaven, outstripping the wind.

A dreamer carried about in his brain a great Leviathan. It was launched upon the billows, and like some collossal swan the palatial steamship now sweeps in majesty through the blue wastes of old ocean.

Six hundred years before Christ, some old Greek discovered electricity by rubbing a piece of amber, and unable to grasp the mystery, he called it soul. His discovery slept for more than two thousand years until it awoke in the dreams of Galvani, and Volta, and Benjamin Franklin. In the morning of the nineteenth century the sculptor and scientist, Morse, saw in his dreams, phantom lightnings leap across continents, and oceans, and felt the pulse of thunder beat as it came bounding over threads of iron that girdled the earth. In each throb he read a human thought. The electric telegraph emerged from his brain, like Minerva from the brow of Jove, and the world received a fresh baptism of light and glory.

In a few more years we will step over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot," and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his "kiss-o-phone" in New York, and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the "aforesaid and the same." I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year's provisions in his vest pocket. The sucking dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the battlefield will become so hot and unhealthy that,

Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminium wings of the swift Pegassus of the air the light-hearted society girl will sail among the stars, and

The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald headed; the women will run the Government—and then I think the end of time will be near at hand.