or heard of Burden. Yet both had conceived the same idea, and both could comprehend alike the magical mysteries of mechanism and of motion. But one was a dreamer and the other was a worker. How vast the difference in the results of their lives.

Dunklee's dreams never found expression in outward works, never lifted an arm in useful labor, never filled a single mouth with bread.

Burden has embodied his conceptions, and they have become tangible shapes, working out wonderful results. His horseshoes ring over the pavements of a thousand cities in the Old World and in the New. At Shiloh, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, at Malvern Hill, in the Wilderness and before Richmond, in Sheridan's ride and Sherman's march, each fiery hoof that pranced along "the perilous edge of battle," was shod with shoes from Burden's works. Each iron rail that forms a link in the almost endless chain of railway that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, helping "to bind the silken chain of commerce round the world," is fastened in its bed with spikes from Burden's mills.

Thus has Burden lightened Labor of her drudgery, and relieved Civilization of her wants. Thus has he given employment to a thousand willing hands, and filled a thousand homes with daily bread.

But can nothing be said for poor Dunklee? Are not the world's inventors, after all, the superiors of the world's workers? Is not invention itself the highest kind of work? Without the inventors, the world's mere workers would be but senseless plodders.

Burden possessed in a high degree the gift of inventive genius, coupled with rare executive ability. But Nature is

seldom thus prodigal of her favors, and poor Dunklee was gifted with as high constructive powers as Burden, but like nine-tenths of his class, Dunklee lacked the faculty of getting on in the world.

But constructive power is one of the highest faculties of the human soul. To possess the constructive faculty in a high degree is the distinctive mark of genius. Without it the poet could never weave his undying songs; the sculptor could never fashion his faultless figures, nor the musical composer unfold his immortal symphonies. It is in vain to attempt to belittle constructive power by pointing to the bee, the bird, and the beaver as examples of its existence in a high degree in beings inferior to man. Rather let us stand in awe before their matchless works, for their creations are but the handiwork of the Supreme Architect, who through them and by them manifests His ceaseless care, His changeless love, for his creatures. Call the world in which those persons live who possess high constructive powers, if you please, a world of dreams, yet out of it come all the useful and beautiful things of life. All the wonderful appliances for the aid and comfort of man which mark our era of civilization as the highest the world has ever seen, are the fruits of the world's inventors. All the marvelous works of art which seem to give to life its highest pleasures, come from the glowing ideals of the world's dreamers. The teeming brains of the world's great inventors give them no peace, no rest, until their ideals find outward expression in tangible forms of use and beauty. The world's inventors are the world's great teachers. Yet oftener than otherwise the world shows little favor to such men. "Hunger and nakedness," says Carlyle, "perils and reviling, the prison,

the cross, the poison-chalice, have, in most times and countries, been the market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it."

But the world's treasures do not satisfy the longings of such men. And what matters it if they do suffer from hunger, and thirst, and nakedness? They live in a world of their own creation, whose sky is blue in eternal beauty, and in which the nectar of the gods is not sweeter than their daily food. They have a deeper insight into the hidden things and beauties of the world around them, in which we all live, than most men have, and they are, in consequence of it, poets, painters and inventors-in a word, the world's great teachers.

But the world has been dreaming too much, and working too little until now. The ages of the past have been ages of darkness, of superstition, of error, of dreams. The philosophers and sages of antiquity spent their lives in dreaming, scorning to do anything useful. The School-men were dreamers, the Crusaders were dreamers. The age of Chivalry was an age of romance and of dreams. Yet out of this chaos of dreams a new order of things has arisen. This new order is presided over by the genius of Useful Labor. Henceforth Useful Labor, guided by Science, by Art, by Inventive Genius, rules the world.

The Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence present a scene of the most enchanting beauty. They occur where the river crosses a depression of the Laurentian chain of mountains, that there extend into Northern New York from their Canadian home. There these mountains seem kindly to stoop, as it were, in crossing, to allow the great river to flow on unobstructed to the ocean, their highest points only rising above the surface of the water to form these islands.

From the Thousand Islands the Laurentides extend easterly to the shores of Lake Champlain, southerly to the valley of the Mohawk, westerly to the Black River, and, rising into a vast system of highlands, form the rocky groundwork of the Great Wilderness, with its thousand mountain peaks and its thousand lakes in the intervening valleys.

Here, its current partially obstructed by this mountain chain, the stream spreads into a broad, placid lake, with these thousand islands in fairy-like forms studding its surface. Sometimes they appear only as projecting rocks,

with but room for a single dwarfish tree, or perhaps a seabird's nest at others as high, rounded forms, forest crowned, and then again as a broad land of miles in extent, covered with cultivated farms. Such a one is Wellesley's Island, already becoming famous as a camp meeting ground, and whose Indian name, Ta-ni-ha-ta, which it derives from an old village of that name on the Canadian shore, should now be restored.

In the soft, hazy light of the short Canadian summer, this "Lake of the Thousand Isles" seems more like the fabled oceans of the old fairy tales out of which arose the Islands of the Blessed, than it does like anything that belongs to this work-a-day world of ours.

In the month of June, not many years ago, it was my good fortune to visit the Thousand Islands upon a short pleasure excursion. I was accompanied by some friends, and our little party arrived at the village of Alexandria Bay on the American shore late in the afternoon of a sultry day. We were wearied by a long and dusty ride across the flat country that there skirts the great river, but soon forgot our troubles in viewing the glorious sunset that we were just in time for. It was so early that we were greeted at our hotel as the first guests of the season, and in the morning had our choice of boats and fishermen.

We had planned a trip of a dozen miles or more up the river, with the intention of passing the night upon one of the islands there, and of returning on the morrow. As our boatmen rowed us slowly along up the broad river, around and among the islands, with our trolling lines all out, many a fine pike and pickerel was tempted to take the enticing bait, and was safely landed in our boats.