. At a point where
he seemed about to perish a voice called loudly, "Do you yet desire to
go on?"

And his answer was, "I desire to go on."

Returning to the inmost temple he was told to enter a certain door and
wait therein. He was then blindfolded and when he opened the door to
enter, he walked off into space and fell into a pool of ice-cold water.

While floundering there the voice again called, "Do you yet desire to go
on?"

And his answer was, "I desire to go on."

At another time he was tied upon the back of a donkey and the donkey was
led along a rocky precipice, where lights danced and flickered a
thousand feet below.

"Do you yet want to go on?" called the voice.

And Pythagoras answered, "I desire to go on."

The priests here pushed the donkey off the precipice, which proved to be
only about two feet high, the gulf below being an illusion arranged with
the aid of lights that shone through apertures in the wall.

These pleasing little diversions Pythagoras afterward introduced into
the college which he founded, so to teach the merry freshmen that
nothing, at the last, was as bad as it seemed, and that most dangers are
simply illusions.

The Egyptians grew to have such regard for Pythagoras that he was given
every opportunity to know the inmost secrets of the mysteries. He said
he encompassed them all, save those alone which were incomprehensible.

This was probably true.

The years spent in Egypt were not wasted--he learned astronomy,
mathematics, and psychology, a thing then not named, but pretty well
understood--the management of men.

It was twenty years before Pythagoras returned to Samos. His mother was
dead, so she passed away in ignorance of the secrets of the gods--which
perhaps was just as well.

Samos now treated Pythagoras with great honor.

Crowds flocked to his lectures, presents were given him, royalty paid
him profound obeisance.

But Samos soon tired of Pythagoras. He was too austere, too severe; and
when he began to rebuke the officials for their sloth and indifference,
he was invited to go elsewhere and teach his science of life. And so he
journeyed into Southern Italy, and at Crotona built his Temple to the
Muses and founded the Pythagorean School. He was the wisest as well as
the most learned man of his time.

* * * * *

Some unkind person has said that Pythagoras was the original charter
member of the Jesuits Society. The maxim that the