The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-18
ewell Ford, in the Reader.

Sewell Ford, in the Reader.
1t is popular belief that imagination
is monopolized by poets novelists and chill
dren who see horrid shapes in the DARK
Also is it quite the conventional thing TO say
of our most useful and most successtui
men, 'He is wholly practical, without
spark of imagination
AS a matter of fact, ina gination, which
is nothing more than the power OF making
mental pictures, is common possession or
humanity. 1t is no more an exclusive and
peculiar faculty of the fiction writer than
his sight or his hearing.
The farmer, dropping seed corn into the
furrowed ground on wet May morning,
pictures the long lines of pennant-waving,
kernel-fruited stalks yellowing under Sep
TENDERS sun. The mason, patiently laying
brick on brick sees in his minds eye the
completed wall before he lays his first
course The architect, working out ground
plans and elevations, sees rooms and doors
and windows long before they exist. Inc
village storekeeper, buying his stock or
goods for the coming season, makes mental
forecast OF the demand for this or tnat,
and reaps profit loss his imagination
is keen or dull.
Gathered about a shiny-topped table Is a
group of sober. dignihed. weil-groomed
meR-the directors of a corporation. They
are planning, perhaps, commercial CAM
paign that shall enable them to exact trio-
ute from all the people in all the markets
OF the world. They are men whose .lmaSl-
nations have been most acutely trained
along special lines. Each has in his brain
a maker of wonderful pictures.
Your politician, weaving the elusive
threads of pubic opinion into tangible
banner under which he summons millions OF
voters TO rally for victory, he has imagina-
tion-and sometimes precious little else.
Lessons.
Cyrus w. Field-in the mind OF each was
maker of marvellous pictures. Napoleons
drew for him the map of Europe with
France Serawled clear across the face or
il. Newton's pictured all the worlds with
strong, invisible hands reaching out into
space and drawing star TO star Field s
showed him the linking Of ocean,separated
continents. De I'esseps's pictured the join
ing of continent-separated oceans.
Imagination Why. you cannot cook a
dinner, carve a statue, catch muskrat or
play game of checkers without 1t.
And yet with most consummate assur-
ance we folks of the pen and ink-pot have
appropriated to ourselves this universal
quality of mind. We have even built up
an aristocracy on the assumption, the aris-
tocracy of letters A Understanding, vanity
tickling phrase it is, and 1t has acquired
such sanction of usage that TO most ears it
Aristocracy fiddlesticks! Why should the
writer OF possibly dull stories, muddy
poems, half-baked essays, rate himself
higher than the man who, from a mass Of
brick and stone and wood, fashions a house
that will stand for a half century, or abive
the shipbuilder whose oak-ribbed handi-
work resists the buffets of thousand
storms?
The aristocracy of letters Let us stop
our ears against such vain batteries. Let
us, in all humility. strive to be genuine and
honest and sincere in all the work We do.
And the nearer we approach to the achiev-
ing of such virtues, the less we will care for
aristocracy, whether OF pen or purse or
heritage.