Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1914 — BUILDING “CASTLES IN AIR [ARTICLE]

BUILDING “CASTLES IN AIR

Proceeding That Seems Foolish, If Nal Reprehensible, to Borne, May Readily Be Explained. Those who build castles in the aiz are occasionally spoken of by more matter-of-fact persons with brutal and noisy derision, but oftener with a kind of tender pity which they find, not unjustifiably, far more exasperating. It implies so complete a misunderstanding of the builders’ frame of mind. They are supposed to live in a vale of disappointments, but if they be out-and-out workmen with a love of their art they do, in fact, nothing of the kind. Long before one castle has actually fallen, sometimes even before so much as a telltale crack has appeared in the walls,, they are planning the foundations of another on a larger and more gorgeous scale. When the crash ultimately cornea it is unheard, for the din of cranes and hammers already are hard at work again. 'Wo have it on Sam Weller’s authority that to take to building houses is “a medical term for being, incurable." And very fortunately that is, a fortiori, still more true of castles. It is not, however, this implication of a life made up of disillusionment* that is the most difficult to bear. Rather it is the suggestion that those who indulge in day dreams are so besotted as to believe that they will all of them come true. This is at once a slur on their Intelligence and on their ability to play their own game properly; it shows that the sympathetic and stupid creatures who make it could never acquire the rudiments of the game if they were to try for a thousand years. As long as the player is trammeled by doubts and wondering* whether anything so beautiful could ever really befall him, he must almost of necessity curb his fancy and turn sadly back from some glorious flight; but, once he has as much as half admitted to Jhimself that he is moving in the realms of fantasy, he can soar away to heights unknown. Putting altogether on one side the delight that they give in the making, it may well be a question whether any material profit is to be derived from castles in the air.