Snakes play a large part in the symbol language in revealing treachery, deception, cunning and danger. While in a vision or dream where one kills the snake it reveals a degree of overcoming the treachery.

I presume, that person never lived who has not at some time been warned, in dream or vision of threatened danger, treachery or dup licity, and there is no more perfect symbol of this than to dream of or see a vision of snakes threatening the party.

One dark night, while in company with a friend, we were walking along an unlighted street. We passed along a stone wall and as we had nearly passed the wall my friend stopped and looked about. He then went on again for a few steps and stopped and looked back again. I asked him what was wrong, for he seemed puzzled. He replied that he felt like an assassin was behind the stone wall. We went close to the wall along the path we had come, and under a limb of a tree on the wall there was crouched a large black cat. That satisfied the man, and he stated that whenever coming in contact with a cat after night the sensation was as if meeting an assassin. He said: “A cat means so much in symbol." People with loving dispositions will pet a cat and take the greatest care of one, and in the night that cat will roam the streets killing every bird they come to, and it is said that a cat will kill fifty birds a week. We wonder why there are no birds in town where people love them so much

and feed them. They feed them to make them tame for the murderous cats to kill.

The symbols of snow when in vision or dream reveal adversity. If one slides over the snow and barely touches it, it indicates a degree of success in overcoming adversity. It means adversity in any symbol that snow can be referred to. While mud and muddy water indicates adversity, it is of another class of adversity and just in proportion to the thickness of the mud, the number of the steps in crossing it, does the adversity continue. If but a few steps are tak en in passing over a muddy road, the duration of the sickness will be that long in proportion. When one finds himself mired in a swamp from which he cannot extricate himself, he will remember all that life has held for him, for his days are numbered-smile as he may at the wisdom of God and the foolishness of man as it is called. He will go hence and all the physicians or metaphysicians on earth will not be able to turn the adversity aside; he will go soon after that symbol is revealed. Should you find yourself in but a few steps of mire and you reach the solid earth in a step or two, you can laugh at the temporary adversity and let it pass.

The dreamer is delighted with clear water in dream or vision, and wherever this is revealed delight comes from it and only pleasure results from such symbols and the dreamer is rewarded y getting glad tidings--a letter from a friend or some evidence of gladness. One cannot but

contemplate what a contrast there is in the condition of the two symbols. The Bible speaks of the floods, the clear waters, the brooks, and wherever it refers to these it brings a pleasure to the reader. In song, in romance, the clear streams are woven in as a pleasant dream—a Heaven of rest.

There is not the slightest difference in the nationality wherein the spirit reveals the beauties of the symbols in spiritual lessons. God is no respecter of persons-does not select any one nation on which to bestow his loving kindness. There are schools of religion that deny their own senses-discard all that is good.

A lady dreamed that her son drowned in a deep pool of muddy water; that she saw him. swept over the falls and lost from sight. She followed along the stream and in a pool of clear water she saw him and carried him home. Her son was in good health at the time of the dream, but was taken sick and went down rapidly and was at death's door for weeks, but recovered.

Herbert Spencer was a good billiard player. He said that to be a good billiard player was evidence of scholarship. One day a young billiard player engaged Spencer in a game of billiards and defeated him badly. Spencer said: "To be a good billiard player is evidence of scholarship, but to be too good a player is evidence of much wasted time."

There are well educated men, scientists, that discard all evidence of the spirit in symbol form, treating it as a weakness. They declare

that a faculty above the normal, strengthened to a degree above the level of the ordinary man shows that person to be insane to the degree in which he possesses the superiority over others. Edison goes in the stillness of the midnight hours and alone he communes with nature, and declares that in this way has gained all his great discoveries. Richard Wagner would spend many an hour in his garden in the late hours of the night when all was hushed and still and in this way caught the harmonic sounds that made him famous as a musician.

CHAPTER VII.

Silence.

Silence has been the mystery all down the ages. It is the bridge of the Gods. The bridge. over the gulf between the finite and the infinite. Here the noisy rabble of the pulsating, throbbing being the material man must in a measure quiet down, and allow the spirit to come to the fore and watch the destinies of the passing associates. It has to do with man primarily, for man is a god, a creator, a builder, an architect, a designer. He must build his own house, and whether that be good or bad, a palace or a hovel, a castle or a hut, he must dwell in it. If it falls on him and he is crushed, the fault is only his own. No man has anything to fear but himself. He has no other great enemy to contend with. Here the furnace, the crucible, the retort into which the choice metals along with the base metals are poured and separated. Every man is his own Alchemist. Gold will mingle with the baser metals, but if the admixture is not more nearly gold, if the proportion is not more gold than base metals, the composition will not stand the acid test; the application of the test will reveal the deception.

Spirit has no limitation. Spirit speaks and other spirits hear; spirit acts and other spirits act in conjunction with it. Spirit never sleeps.