Putting the Mind on its Feet.

But after all it is better actually to see what you see, than only to think you see what you would like to see. Imagination certainly is a necessary precedent to peregrination. Man first visions the vistas of vagabondage and then, if his purse is strong enough to back his fancy, his feet follow his imagination and he sets out to disprove all the geographical preconceptions inoculated in his unwilling mind during the defenceless years of his youth. He may have a hazy conception of the population of Pernambuco, the number of isles in the Archoo Archipelago, and he may try to remember whether Popocatapetl is the capital of Esperanto or the name of the last Inca king. And then he goes a'sailing and finds that the geographical germinations in his mind are knocked cold by the acme of actuality.