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28 ground in the same place. The remembrance whereof least it should perish, we haue added hereunto the very words: This holy gift to the God, &c. as before.

The above is of interest, for there is no doubt that some learned alchymist had prepared this tincture for the benefit of mankind, and that with it the Philosopher’s Stone might easily have been evolved; but, alas! the pots were dashed into pieces, and it is not given to us to revel in eternal youth.

But failing to transmute the baser metals into gold,—in spite of all my repeated experiments and wearied watchings,—I am fain to take the precious metal, pure as Dame Nature gives it us from Mother Earth; truly in all ages great and marvellous things have been done with it. If we go back to the earliest ages of which we have historic data, gold seems to have been an important factor in daily life. In the old Jewish books it is mentioned as being most plentiful. In