rd in an
attitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his chair. He was
trembling. This strange modern confirmation of his early Heaven of wonder
before the senses had thickened and concealed it, laid bare again his
earliest world of far-off pristine glory.

"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a sound
attached to their physical appearance at birth by the parents--a
meaningless sound. It is not their true name. That, however, exists
behind it in the spiritual world, and is the accurate description of
the soul. It is the sound you express visibly before me. The Word is
the Life."

Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the clergyman spied
the movement. "Never mind the notes," he said; "listen closely to me."
Spinrobin obeyed meekly.

"Your ordinary outer name, however," continued Mr. Skale, speaking with
profound conviction, "may be made a conductor to your true, inner one.
The connection between the two by a series of subtle interior links forms
gradually with the years. For even the ordinary name, if you reflect a
moment, becomes in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with the
finest threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you _become_
it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room full of
people, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock, however small, of
increased vitality. It touches the imagination. It calls upon the soul
built up around it."

He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the room, even after
he ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering, delighted, Spinrobin drank in
every word. How well he knew it all.

"Now," resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone unconsciously, "the first
part of my discovery lies in this: that I have learned to pronounce the
ordinary names of things and people in such a way as to lead me to their
true, inner ones--"

"But," interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name of--?"

"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty name--in
vain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what I now tell you,
and you shall understand a part, at least, of my discovery. As I was
saying, I have learned how to find the true name by means of the false;
and understand, if you can, that to pronounce a true name correctly means
to participate in its very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, to
learn the ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are the
sounds o