d
follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften
for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.

Here is another difficult text: (Figure 2)

It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language
which has perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred
years before the Christian era.

Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon
our crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking
students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures;
yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the
figures grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeds in
interpreting to their satisfaction. These: (Figure 3)

The suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they would fill a
book.

Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only
when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties
disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom of
the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds,
and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century,
although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded
instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child
can read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange
and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration.
Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the
Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them,
but entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out,
now--entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hiding-places
for the divine intentions they were inadequate.

A part of the wall of Valletri in former times been struck with thunder,
the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would
some time or other arrive at supreme power. --BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p. 138.

"Some time or other." It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened,
all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch,
then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus in
mind, and had come to give notice.

There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just
before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and
romantic