By George Matthew Adams (written 1913)

Imagination is the greatest asset that the world’s Doers have ever had. Money, titles, estates — they are all cheap beside this marvelous gift. Imagination is the creator of them all in most instances.

Cultivate your Imagination. You who read this — did you ever stop to consider that you would not be worth the free air you breathe were it not for the fact that you possess to some extent the power of Imagination?

Cultivate your Imagination. People do the things they first see done with their Imagination. McAdoo with the eye of his mind saw rapid cars taking thousands of people daily under the Hudson river. Of course, people turned their heads and smiled at his dream. But McAdoo made real his dream in the Hudson tunnels. Marconi saw the messages of people thousands of miles away floating on the waves of the air and sounded off at a marvelous instrument. He was at once rated as crazy. But he went ahead and presented to an astonished world the unbelievable Wireless telegraph!

Cultivate your Imagination. People call America the “land of Opportunity.” It is the land of Imagination. Hera the humblest rises to the greatest position of power. It’s the working of Imagination that contributes most. The obscure clerk sees himself President of the concern he serves. Then he advances step by step until he realizes his aim. His first step toward the President’s job was to see himself with his Imagination, occupying it.

Cultivate you Imagination. The great Perthes once said “that a quick Imagination is the salt of earthly life, without which nature is but a skeleton; but the higher the gift the greater the responsibility.”

Cultivate your Imagination. Cultivate it in little things. Then the little things will become big things. Then the big things will take their place among the undying things. History is but the story of the achievements of people who had Imagination.

Cultivate your Imagination.