To some people any talk about the importance of training the
imagination of children through their toys, games and studies seems
fantastic and trivial. They compare it to feeding them on sweetmeats;
they think it means substituting story books for real life and
encouraging the easy exercise of fancy for the careful study of fact.

But imagination is not a mere ornament to a life-work; it is rather
one of its most valuable and necessary tools. If it did no more than
sweeten and adorn the world, it would be well worth having, well worth
making considerable sacrifices to attain. But it does more than this.
It bears much fruit as well as flowers; fruit that, if it ripens in
suitable weather, endures and can be used for the service of man.

There is a wonderful palm-tree, called the Tal or Palmyra palm, which
in India and Ceylon supports six or seven millions of people, and
"works" also in West Africa, where it is probably native. It gives its
young shoots and unripe seeds as food; its trunk makes a whole boat,
or a drum or a walking-stick, according to size; hats, mats, thread
and baskets--in fact, almost all kinds of clothing and utensils--are
made from the split and plaited leaves; gum comes from it, and certain
medicines, jaggery sugar too and an intoxicating drink for those who
desire it. In one of the museums at Kew--a wet day brings always
_something_ besides disappointment--there is a book made up of the
very leaves of the palm, containing a Tamil poem enumerating more than
eight hundred human uses to which this marvellous single plant can be
put.

Now the imagination is like a Palmyra palm. We stand a long way off
and, looking up, say "What a graceful tree! But what a pity it