For years a poor country boy builds air castles of his future. He visualizes the great mercantile establishment over which he is to preside. The ridicule of his family and of young companions cannot daunt him or blur the bright vision he sees away in the distance. He continues to nurse his vision, and behold, out of the unknown, unexpected resources come, and soon he finds himself an office boy in a great mercantile house in the city of his dreams. He watches everything with an eagle eye; he absorbs information and ideas; he is alert, active, energetic, resourceful, and in a few months he is promoted, and then again promoted. He attracts the attention of the head of the establishment, who calls him into his private office, tells him that he has had his eye on him for many months and that he believes he is the youth he has been looking for to manage the business. He gives him a little stock; the business prospers still further under his management, and in a few years the new manager is made a full partner in the house which he entered as an office boy. This is the flowering out of his dream, the objectifying of his vision, the matching with reality his youthful longings. His brain has been continually developing along the line of his vision, drawing to him the material to make it real.

A poor girl, the daughter of humble people in Maine who thought that to become a public singer was an unforgivable sin, could not in the beginning see any possible way to realize the dreams she held in secret, but she kept visualizing her dream, nursing her desire and doing the only thing for its realization her parents would allow,--singing in a little church choir. Gradually the way opened, and one step led to another until the little Maine girl became the famous Madame Nordica, one of the world's greatest singers.

No matter if you are a poor girl away back in the country, and see no possible way of leaving your poor old father and mother in order to prepare for your career, don't let go of your desire. Whether it be music, art, literature, business or a profession, hold to it. No matter how dark the outlook, keep on visualizing your desire and light and opportunity will come to enable you to make it a reality. Whatever the Creator has fitted you to do He will give you a chance to do, if you cling to your vision and struggle as best you can for its attainment.

Think of the Lillian Nordicas, the Lucy Stones, the Louisa Alcotts, the Mary Lyons, the Dr. Anna Howard Shaws, the thousands of women who were hedged in just as you are, by poverty or forbidding circ.u.mstances of some sort, yet succeeded in spite of everything in doing what they desired to do, in being what they longed to be. Take heart and believe that G.o.d has given you also "all implements divine to shape the way" to your soul's desire.

If you are a boy on a farm and feel that you are a born engineer, yet see no possible way to get a technical education, don't lose heart or hope. Get what books you can on your specialty. Cling to your vision.

Push out in every direction that is possible to you. It may take years, but if you are true to yourself your concentration on your desire, your pushing toward it, will open a door into the light, and before you know it you will be on the road to your goal.

The Washingtons, the Lincolns, the Faradays, the Edisons, the men who have done most for their country and for humanity have had to struggle as hard as you are struggling to attain their heart's desire. The opportunities for boys and girls to bring out whatever the Creator has implanted in them are ten to one to-day to what they were one hundred, or fifty, or even twenty-five years ago. The great danger in our time is not lack of chance or opportunity but of losing our vision, of letting our ambition die.

Most of us instead of treating our desires seriously trifle with them as though they were only to be played with, as though they never could be realities. We do not believe in their divinity. We regard our heart longings, our soul yearnings as fanciful vagaries, romances of the imagination. Yet we know that every invention, every discovery or achievement that has blessed the world began in a desire, in a longing to produce or to do a certain thing, and that the persistent longing was accompanied by a struggle to make the mental picture a reality.

It is difficult for us to grasp the fact that ambition, accompanied by effort, is actually a creative power which tends to realize itself. Our minds are like that of the doubting disciple, who would not believe that his Lord had risen until he had actually thrust his finger into the side which had been pierced by a cruel spear. Only the things that we see seem real to us when, as a matter of fact, the most real things in the world are the unseen.

We never doubt the existence of the force that brings the bud out of the seed, the foliage and the flower out of the bud, the fruits, the vegetables from the flower. It is invisible. We cannot sense it, but we know that it is mightier than anything we see. No one can see or hear or feel gravitation, or the forces which balance the earth and whirl it with lightning speed through s.p.a.ce, bringing it round its...o...b..t without a variation of the tenth of a second in a century, yet who can doubt their reality? Does any one question the mighty power of electricity because it cannot be seen or heard or smelled?

The potency of our desires, of our soul longings, when backed by the effort to make them realities, is just as real as is that of any of the unseen forces in Nature's great laboratory. The great cosmic ether is packed with invisible potentialities. Whatever comes out of it to you comes in response to your call. Everything you have accomplished in life has been a result of a psychic law which, consciously or unconsciously, you have obeyed.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that the way will not open because you cannot now see any possible means of achieving that for which you long. The very intensity of your longing for a certain career, to do a certain thing, is the best evidence that you have the ability to match it, and that this ability was given you for a purpose, even to play a divine, a magnificent part in the great universal plan. The longing is merely the forerunner of achievement. It is the seed that will germinate if nurtured by effort.

If, however, you stop at sowing the seed you will get just about as much harvest as a farmer would get if he should sow his seeds without preparing the soil, without fertilizing or cultivating it or keeping down the weeds. It is the blending of the practical with the ideal that brings the harvest from the seed thought. You must keep on struggling toward your ideal. No matter how black and forbidding the way ahead of you, just imagine you are carrying a lantern which will advance with you and give light enough for the next step. It is not necessary to see to the end of the road. All the light you need is for the next step. Faith in your vision and persistent endeavor will do the rest. There is no doubt that if we do our part, the Divinity that has created us, given us an appointed place and a work in the plan of the universe, will bring things out better than we can plan or even imagine.

Send out your wishes, cherish your desires, force out your yearnings, your heart longings with all the intensity and persistency you can muster, and you will be surprised to see how soon they will begin to attract their affinities, how they will grow and take tangible shape, and ultimately become actual things. Fling out your desires into the cosmic ether boldly, with the utmost confidence. Therein you will gather the material which shall build into reality the castle of your dreams.

The trouble with us is that we are afraid to do this. We fear that fate will mock us, cast back to us our mental visions empty of fruition. We do not understand the laws governing our thought forces any more than we understand the laws governing the universe. If we had faith in their power, our earnest thoughts and efforts would germinate and bud and flower just as does the tiny seed we put into the earth.

Think how the seed must be tended and nurtured before it will give forth the new life. See how the delicate bud has to be coaxed by the sun and air for many months before it pushes its head up through the tough sod to the light. Suppose it were afraid to make the attempt and should say: "It is impossible for me to get out of this dark earth. There is no light here. I am so tender the slightest pressure will break me and stop my growth forever. The only way out of my prison is to push up through this tough sod, and it would take a tremendous force to do that. I would be crushed, strangled, before I got half way through."

But the sun beckons, coaxes, encourages. The bud is moved into attempting the "impossible," and behold, in a few days it rears its tender head above what it considered the great enemy of its progress.

The dark sod, the very thing which it thought was going to make its future impossible, becomes its support and strength. The very struggle to get up through the soil has strengthened its fiber and fitted it to cope with the elements above, with the storms it must meet.

Just like this tender plant, you may be hemmed in by seemingly insurmountable obstacles; you may not see a ray of light through the sod of hard, forbidding circ.u.mstances, but hold your vision and keep pushing. In your struggle you will develop strength, you will find sunshine and air, growth and life. You may be shut in by an uncongenial occupation and tempted to lose heart and give up your dreams because you can see no way to better yourself. This is just the time to cling to them, and to insist that they shall come true. Without knowing it you may be just in the middle of the sod, and if you keep pushing where you are, in season and out of season, you will come to the sunlight and the air, to freedom.

There is no human being who doesn't have some sort of a chance. If your present position cramps you; if it does not give you room to express yourself, you can make room by filling it to overflowing, by doing your work as well as it can be done, by keeping your mind steadfastly fixed on the ladder of your ascent. In your mind you make the stairs by which you ascend or descend. n.o.body else can do it for you. The master key which will unlock that cruel door that keeps you back is not in the hand of fate. You are fashioning it by your thoughts.

Your next step is right where you are, in the thing you are doing to-day. The door to something better is always in the duty of the moment. The spirit in which you do your work, the energy which you throw into it, the determination with which you back up your ambition--these, no matter what opposes, are the forces that unlock the door to something better. If you hold to your vision and are honest, earnest and true, there is nothing that can stand in the way of its realization.

I have never known a person who was dead-in-earnest in his efforts to gain his heart's desire who has not finally reached his goal. No great, insistent, persistent, honest longing backed by downright hard, conscientious work ever comes back empty-handed.

Desire is at the bottom of every achievement. We are the product of our desires. What we long for, strive for, the vision we nurse, is our great life shaper, our character molder.

Very few can realize the close coordination which exists between their visions, their mind pictures, and the actual accomplishments of their career. If I were asked to name the princ.i.p.al cause of the majority of failures in life I should say it was the failure to understand this, to grasp the relation of thought to accomplishment. The gradual fading out of one's dreams, the losing of one's vision, may be traced to this cause.

When we first start out in life we are enthusiasts. Our vision is bright and alluring, and we feel confident we are going to win out, that we shall do something distinctive, something individual, unusual. But after a few setbacks and failures we lose heart, and faith in our vision dies.

Then we gradually awaken to the fact that our ambition is beginning to deteriorate. It is not quite as sharply defined as formerly. Our ideals are a trifle dimmed, our longings a trifle less insistent. We try to find reasons and excuses for our lagging efforts and waning enthusiasm.

We think it may be due to over-work; because we are tired and need a rest, or because our health is not quite up to standard, and that by and by our former intense desire to realize our dreams will return. But the whole process is so insidious that before we realize it our fires, for lack of fuel, are quite burned out. Our grip on our vision was not strong enough. We did not half understand its mighty power, when firmly and persistently kept in mind, to help us to our goal.

What we get out of life depends very largely on fidelity to our visions.

If we believe in them we will not let them die for lack of nursing. If we really have ability to match them, and are not self-deceived by egotism, petty vanity and conceit, no misfortunes, no failure of plans, no discouragements, no obstacles, nothing in the world can separate us from them. We will cling to them to our dying day.

The man who believes in his life vision, who is not a mere egotist or idle dreamer, who sees in his desire a prophecy of something which he is perfectly able to make come true,--he is the man who has ever made the world move. He flings his life into his effort to match his vision with its reality.

The world stands aside for such a one, for one who believes in his vision, who consecrates himself without reserve to its fulfillment.

People know there is something back of the dreamer who has such faith in his life dream that he will sacrifice everything to make it come true.

How much of a grip has your vision on you? Does it clutch you with a force that nothing but death can relax, or does it hold you so lightly that you are easily separated from it, discouraged from trying to make it real?

Constant discouragements are a great temptation to abandon one's life dreams, to drop one's standards. One's vision is apt to become blurred in pa.s.sing through great crises, in periods of general depression, in times of financial stress, but this is really the test of a strong character,--that he does not allow obstacles to divert him from his one aim. The man who is made of the stuff that wins hangs on to his vision, even to the point of starvation, for he knows that there is only one way of bringing it down to earth, and that is by clinging to it through storm and stress, in spite of every obstacle and discouragement.

Never mind what discouragements, misfortunes or failures come to you, let n.o.body, no combination of unfortunate circ.u.mstances, destroy your faith in your dream of what you believe you were made to do. Never mind how the actual facts seem to contradict the results you are after. No matter who may oppose you or how much others may abuse and condemn you, cling to your vision, because it is sacred. It is the G.o.d-urge in you.

You have no right to allow it to fade or to become dim. Your final success will be measured by your ability to cling to your vision through discouragement. It will depend largely upon your stick-to-it-ive-ness, your bull dog tenacity. If you shrink before criticism and opposition you will demagnetize your mind and lose all the momentum which you have gained in your previous endeavor. No matter how black or threatening the outlook, keep working, keep visualizing your life dream, and some unexpected way will surely open for its fulfillment.

Put out of your mind forever any thought that you can possibly fail in reaching the goal of your longing. Set your face toward it; keep looking steadfastly in the direction of your ambition, whatever it may be; resolve never to recognize defeat, and you will by your mental att.i.tude, your resolution, create a tremendous force for the drawing of your own to you. If you have the grit and stamina to stick, to persevere to the end, if you persistently maintain the victorious att.i.tude toward your vision victory will crown your efforts.

CHAPTER V

A NEW ROSARY

There is a great significance in that pa.s.sage in St. Mark: "All the things whatsoever ye pray and ask for believe ye _have_ received them and ye have." We are bidden to believe that what we wish _has already been fulfilled_; that if we take this att.i.tude we shall obtain our desire.

The benefit we derive from prayer is the harmonizing poising, balancing of our own mind, putting ourselves into closer communion into a more vital connection with the Divine Mind, through which we receive a larger supply of our Father's blessings.

Prayer is the opening up of the pinched supply pipes of the mind which shut out the divine inflow; it is the letting into our lives greater abundance from the unlimited supply which continually flows from the Source of all sources.

"Mary," said a young girl to a Catholic friend, "why do you carry that rosary everywhere, and what possible good does it do you to count those beads over and over?"

"Oh," answered Mary, "I never could make you understand what a comfort this rosary is to me. When I am tired out, or blue or discouraged about anything; or when I long very much for something that it seems impossible I should ever get, I take my rosary and begin to pray. Before I have gone over half of its beads, everything is changed. The tired, discouraged feeling is gone, or if I have been asking for something I long to have, it doesn't seem nearly so far away as before; and I know that if I don't get just what I ask for, I'll get something better."

Those who are too narrow-minded or too prejudiced to see anything good in a creed which is not their own, often sneer at the Catholic custom of "saying the rosary." To them it is only "superst.i.tion," "nonsense," to repeat the same prayer over and over. These people do not understand the philosophy as well as the religion underlying this beautiful old custom.

They do not know the power that inheres in the repet.i.tion of the spoken word, and in the influence of the thought expressed.

Any one can prove this for himself or herself. It isn't necessary to get a rosary made of beads. You can make your own, an intangible but very real rosary, and if you say it over, not once, or twice a day, but over and over many times, and especially before retiring at night, you will be surprised at the wonderful results.

Is it a fault you wish to correct; is it a talent or gift you desire to develop and improve; is it money, or friends, an education, success in any enterprise; is it contentment, peace of mind, happiness, power to serve, power in your work,--whatever it is you desire, make it a bead in your rosary, pray for its accomplishment, think of it, work for its fulfillment and your desire will materialize.

There are many ways of praying. All our prayers are not vocalized pet.i.tions to the Almighty. They are also our inspirations, the aspirations of the soul to be and to do. Desire is prayer. The sincerest prayer may be the longing of the heart to cultivate a talent or talents, or the intense desire to get an education so that one may be of greater service in the world. That which we dream of and struggle to attain, our efforts to make good; these are genuine prayers.

When Jane Addams, as a little girl, longed for the power to lift up other little girls and make them happy; when she dreamed of a time when she should be grown up and doing a great work in the service of humanity, she was praying. She was even then laying the foundations of Hull House, and the Hull House of to-day is an answered prayer. Her whole life from childhood up was a prayer, because it was a preparation for a great and n.o.ble work.

When the child, Frances Willard, longed and dreamed in her remote Wisconsin home, she was praying and building as surely as in her later years when she was the moving power of the great organization she had brought into being. "I always wanted to react on the world about me to my utmost ounce of power," she said in telling of her early life and aspirations. "Lying on the prairie gra.s.s and lifting my hand toward the sky, I used to say in my inmost spirit, 'What is it? What is the aim to be, O G.o.d?'"

Such n.o.ble heart yearnings are, in the truest sense, prayers. The uttered prayer clothed in beautiful language, that which is delivered in the pulpit to be heard of men, may not be a real prayer at all. The collective prayer of the congregation may be a mockery. I have often been in churches where people were repeating prayers automatically, while looking all about the auditorium watching other people, mentally occupied, while their lips moved in a so-called prayer, in noticing what they wore and how they looked. There is no real praying in such a performance as this. It is not soul expression, not heart talking. It is mere parrot talking. All mechanical mumbling of prayers in our church services is an insult to the Creator, who does not hear prayers which do not come from the heart.