ly "purple Death and the strong Fates do conquer us!"
Strangely, in vast solitudes, comes over us a sense of desolation, when
even the faintest adumbrations of life seem lost in the inertia of
mortality. In all pomp lurks the pomp of funeral; and we do now and then
pay homage to the grim skeleton king who sways this dusty earth,--yea,
who sways our hearts of dust!

But it is only when we yield that we are conquered. "The daemon shall
not choose us, _but we shall choose our daemon_."[7] It is only when we
lose hold of our royal inheritance that Time is seen with his scythe and
the heritage becomes a waste.

This is the failure, the central loss, over which Achtheia mourns. Happy
are the _epoptae_ who know this, who have looked the Sphinx in the face,
and escaped death! They are the seers, they the heroes!

But "_Conx Ompax_!"

And now, like good Grecians, let us make the double libation to our
lady,--toward the East and toward the West. That is an important point,
reader; for thus is recognized the intimate connection which our lady
has with the movements of Nature, in which her life is mirrored,--
especially with the rising, the ongoing, and the waning of the day; and
you remember that this also was the relief of the Sphinx's riddle,--this
same movement from the rising to the setting sun. But prominently, as in
all worship, are our eyes turned toward the East,--toward the
resurrection. In the tomb of Memnon, at Thebes, are wrought two series
of paintings; in the one, through successive stages, the sun is
represented in his course from the East to the West,--and in the other
is represented, through various stages, his return to the Orient. It was
to this Orient that the old king looked, awaiting his regeneration.

Thus, reader, in all nations,--by no mere superstition, but by a
glorious symbolism of Faith,--do the children of the earth lay them down
in their last sleep with their faces to the East.

[2] The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for
its antiquity in time than for its prevalence as regards space. To the
Hindu she was the Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the
Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North. According to
Tacitus, (_Germania_, c. 9,) she was worshipped by the ancient Suevi.
She was worshipped by the Muscovite, and representations of her are
found upon the sacred drums of the Laplanders. She swayed the ancient
world, from its southeast corner in Indi