While we may say that the imagination, in some of its aspects, seems superhuman, in others it is most beautifully human. If it implies the power to receive, it also implies the power to give. If it is as simple as a dew drop, it is also as complex and a due drop. However furtive and shy it may be, still it is domestic of habit. It is steadied, controlled and made amenable by the other faculties. If is is a wanderer, so it ever returns. It knows where its home is: it needs you as much as you need it. It goes where you send it, and returns laden with airy nothings. It is your other self–your best friend when you know it and it knows you. If will go anywhere after anything; but beware lest it beguile you, for it is tricky, mischievous thing when you are not looking.

You must train it carefully for its work as you would train a retriever, for, whatever else imagination may be, it is a magnificent retriever. They say imagination is a great painter of pictures, and a famous maker of images, a most skillful and ingenious craftsman. If this be so, then house and feed him well and lavish gifts on him. They say, too, that he is a great constructor and reconstructor. That may be so, too, but I tell you that he is also a great destroyer.

They say that children are imaginative. That is truest and most beautiful of all. Let us remain children as we grow old: For I tell you if you kill a child in man you kill the man in man. No truer saying was ever said than this: The child is father to the man. So recall to your heart your childhood, which is looking at you with a wistfull eye and not so far way.