2. Some condemn reminiscences in general. They call it looking backward and refer to Lot's briny wife. Why not recall that which is plessant? Why not renew old friendships and revisit scenes of earlier years? This does not hinder progress. It helps it, if you use it aright. I love the old friends, the old scenes, the old recollections. If there were trials, I have profited by them. If there were errors, I see in what ways I rose above them and know better now how to

rise above present tendencies in that direction. If there were follies, I laugh at them now. If there were triumphs I rejoice and am stronger because of the review of them. The result is to renew hope and energy and furnish new courage for what is before.

3. It does us good to get out among people. We learn much by it. We know how to prevent them from entering our moral atmosphere with depressing influences. We enter theirs with buoyant, helpful

thoughts. Besides, we thus cement friendships that are valuable. I love to meet acquaintances. I love to have many friends. I love the brotherhood of my Alma Mater. When I meet one with an M. S. U. alumni badge on, it is like two freemasons meeting. A feeling of unison springs up at once. I know we can clasp hands and converse with mutual pleasure and profit. We are in the world, but not of it. Yet we may not be isolated from the people of the world. We have had too much of the unnatural race of hermits, nuns, recluses, monks and dummies to now imagine mahatmas and occults in the New Thought. There are none; so let us cease to imagine them. "Occult" as it is used in business is another name for fraud. Truth is not occult. It is open and free. It does not operate in dark cabinets nor associate with mediums and pretenders. It shines out in open daylight, in nature's unveiled beauties, in the faces of children and honest toilers, in the blue starlit dome of heaven, in homes and fields and good deeds. Here we find people; here we meet the faces and hearts of everyday life and know that we are one with and among them. It is good for us. Bless my soul! There are no occult farmers, mechanics, school teachers, toilers, mothers or children. They are just God's honest, non-mystic darlings, and I am one, too. I would be no other. I love all mankind better because of my recent return to dear old Columbia and its magnificent temples of learning.

4. There are seed thoughts implanted in us all in early childhood that abide and grow and should be nurtured and cultivated and encouraged. I have many from my parents, as well as from my lessons and experiences in school. When I return to the old places and recollections in person and in thought, these are aroused and stirred with new life. It gives them a new impulse and helps me to build anew thereon. These

are basic thoughts, and if good, are most valuable. My mother's simple domestic precepts, my lessons in school when the mind was like a fresh opening rose spreading out its petals for the dews of heaven, my cuffs and bumps and tumbling experiences which my youthful vigor enabled me to rise above, my fundamental lessons in Mathematics, Mental Science and Latin, my first associations with big learned professors and students in higher classes-are all yet a part of my being, foundational and integral. Let the good of it be resuscitated and given an impetus by a renewal of the associations which attended them. We may be wise to select and brave to enforce; but we must be resigned to the inevitable. Yet I believe, "spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," the inevitable is always the best in the end. It must be so if God reigns.

I believe in all that is. I do not believe in patched up abnormalities that are no more than spurious efforts to improve on the Genius of Creation. The recluse may have his pleasures or gratification, but it is the selfish satisfaction of the bear who sucks his paw and dozes in his dismal cave. I prefer the sunny give -and-take joys of the cheerful mixer-I mean the mixer who is not defiled by greed for political preferment or commercial gain. He need not neglect the silence; nor should the other withdraw from people. Both extremes are to be avoided.

"And thus, as in memory's bark we may glide,
To visit the scenes of our boyhood anew,
Though oft we may see, looking down on the tide,
The wreck of full many a hope shining through-
Yet still, as in vision we point to the flowers

That once made a garden of all the gay shore,
Borne back for a moment, we'll know them still ours,

And breathe the fresh air of life's morning once more,"

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Meditations

By Kaxton

O BE taken by surprise shows a lack of wisdom and foresight, for everything that happens does

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so through the concurrence of forces which are continually hurling from the bottomless sea of possibility onto the rugged shores of actuality the uncertain drift-wood of phenomena; and he who has acquired wisdom through watching the incoming tide of events has so often witnessed the unexpected that, in his mind, two very opposite extremes have met, and the unexpected has become the expected, and occasions little surprise. I once told a class in geology that the western coast of California might sometime be the scene of a destructive earthquake. But it was not expected and I was in a measure surprised when it came. It is quite safe to say a thing will happen when we clearly see it as probable, or even possible, for we have always to wait for it, if we are wise enough to give our forecasts unlimited time.

I was once associated with a man who disgraced the name and fair fame of the teacher's profession by deep-seated villainy and a studiously polished exterior. His favorite theory was that any human being was only as good as he was compelled to be by force. He acted on this theory continually, much to my chagrin and regret in my joint labors with him. When I told him plainly of his base views of humanity and his hypocrisy in winning favor for base purposes, and told him his course could not fail to lead finally to disaster, he gave me such an incredulous smile, accompanied with such a piercing glance of his serpent's eye,

that I could scarcely keep down a vague suspicion that this cunning serpent in human form had more of the elements of success in his methods than I was giving him credit for. I saw clearly that his course would bring disaster by all moral reasons that my life had taught me to respect, and I told him what I thought; but at the same time I had a very keen sense of the apparent possibility of his deceiving the world and imposing upon the simple throughout his career, and only meeting justice in a subsequent stage of existence, after leaving to the world an outwardly successful life to prove the truth of his false views. Three years passed by and my prophetic utterances had not been fulfilled. The cunning villain was still forging ahead, and proving by his false life that villainy and hypocrisy are a safe policy and a guaranty of success. But before a month of the fourth year had elapsed the tardy fruitage of a false life, based on false theóries, was reaped, and to my surprise (and regret) my prophecy had its fulfillment. He always developed the worst in those who came nearest him, and in a difference with another associate, anger and hatred were engendered, then threats, then pistols, then two shots in quick succession inflicting two wounds; two men lying on the walk glaring at each other, one with serpent eyes whose glance was growing dim in death, the other with a surprised and regretful look; and the most of deception had fallen from one life as it was blotted out and the black mantle of remorse had settled upon another.

It is with regret that I chronicle this incident although I see in it the inevitable harvest of a prolonged, false sowing. It is an incident which has much significance; notwithstanding its regretful features. It is the studied effort of such lives to place up