stence has
been so stamped upon me that it has been retained in
consciousness. As a child, water and strong winds drove me to
tears. I can remember no other things that brought marked
fear but these. One incident of wind, on a boat going to
Block Island Light-house, off Newport, remains as vivid to
this day as when it was enacted, and I was not yet five at
the time. Every one wondered at these peculiar fears, but the
explanation is plainer if one can look either back or beyond.

"Knowledge is but a glimmering of past experience. We are the
condensed sum of all our past activities. Normal mind and
memory are only of the immediate present, only as old as our
bodies, but once in a long time we fall by chance into
certain peculiar conditions of body, mind, or
soul--conditions that are invoking to great reaches of
consciousness back into the past. Normally our shell is too
thick; we are too dense and too conscious of our present
physical being and vitality, for the ancient one within us to
interpret to the brain. Even in sleep, the brain is usually
embroiled or littered with daily life matters. The brain has
not yet become a good listener, and the voice of the inner
man is ever a hushed whisper.

"The exceptionally low temperature of my body was the
immediate cause of this dream. Here is a conviction that I
brought up from it: I believe that any one by putting himself
into a state of very low temperature and vibration, almost
akin to hibernation, may be enabled to go back in
consciousness toward the Beginnings. Evidently red blood is
wholly of man, but in some way the white corpuscles of the
blood seem to be related to the cold-blooded animals and
hence to the past. Under conditions, such as sleeping on the
ground or in a cold, damp place, these white corpuscles may
be aided to gain ascendency over the heart, brain, and red
corpuscles. This accomplished, the past may be brought back.

"It was a cold, rainy Fall night that the dream came. A
bleak east wind blowing along the lake-shore, probed every
recess of the 'Pontchartrain,' the tiny open-work cottage I
used. The place was flushed like a sieve with wind and rain.
It leaked copiously and audibly, and there was no burrowing
away from the storm. I sought the blankets early in a