If they could only gather broom, heather, shamrock, and edelweiss, they would be able to see clover, alfalfa, arbutus, and mignonette when they came back home.  If they could see black robins in Wales and Germany, the robin redbreast here at home would surely be thought worthy of notice.  If they could see stalactites and stalagmites in Luray Cave, their world would then include these formations.  One of my boys was a member of an exploring expedition in the Andes, and one night they were encamped near a glacier.  This glacier protruded into a lake, and on that particular night the end of that river of ice broke off and thus formed an iceberg.  The glacier was nearly a mile wide, and when the end broke off the sound was such as to make the loudest thunder seem a whisper by comparison.  It was a rare experience for this young fellow to be around where icebergs are made, and vicariously I shared his experience.

I want to know the price of eggs, bacon, and coffee, but I need not go into camp on the price-list.  Having purchased my bacon and eggs, I like to move along to where my friend is sitting, and hear him tell of his experiences with glaciers and icebergs, and so become inoculated with the world-enlarging virus.  Or, if he comes in to share my bacon and eggs, these mundane delights lose none of their flavor by being garnished with conversation on Andean themes.  I’m glad to have my friend push that greatest of monuments, “The Christ of the Andes,” over into my world.  I arise from the table feeling that I have had full value for the money I expended for eggs and bacon.

I’d like to have in my world a liberal sprinkling of stars, for when I am looking at stars I get away from sordid things, for a time, and get my soul renovated.  I think St. Paul must have been associating with starry space just before he wrote the last two verses of that eighth chapter of Romans.  I can’t see how he could have written such mighty thoughts if he had been dwelling upon clothes or symptoms.  The reading of a patent-medicine circular is not specially conducive to thoughts of infinity.  So I like, in my meditations, to take trips from star to star, and from planet to planet.  I like to wonder whether these planets were rightly named—­whether Venus is as beautiful as the name implies, and whether the Martians are really disciples of the warlike Mars.  I like to drift along upon the canals on the planet Mars, with heroic Martians plying the oars.  I have great fun on such spatial excursions, and am glad that I ever annexed these planets to my world.  I can take these stellar companions with me to my potato-patch, and they help the day along.