[Illustration:  Pl.  III.  Heavy gold earrings of Queen Tausert of Dynasty
                        XX.  An example of the work of ancient Egyptian
                        goldsmiths. 
                        —­Cairo museum.]

[Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha.

Heraclitus, in a quotation preserved by Sextus Empiricus,[1] writes:  “It behoves us to follow the common reason of the world; yet, though there is a common reason in the world, the majority live as though they possessed a wisdom peculiar each unto himself alone.”  Every one of us who considers his mentality an important part of his constitution should endeavour to give himself ample opportunities of adjusting his mind to this “common reason” which is the silver thread that runs unbroken throughout history.  We should remember the yesterdays, that we may know what the pother of to-day is about; and we should foretell to-morrow not by to-day but by every day that has been.

    [Footnote 1:  Bywater:  ‘Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae,’ p. 38.]

Forgetfulness is so common a human failing.  In our rapid transit through life we are so inclined to forget the past stages of the journey.  All things pass by and are swallowed up in a moment of time.  Experiences crowd upon us; the events of our life occur, are recorded by our busy brains, are digested, and are forgotten before the substance of which they were made has resolved into its elements.  We race through the years, and our progress is headlong through the days.

Everything, as it is done with, is swept up into the basket of the past, and the busy handmaids, unless we check them, toss the contents, good and bad, on to the great rubbish heap of the world’s waste.  Loves, hates, gains, losses, all things upon which we do not lay fierce and strong hands, are gathered into nothingness, and, with a few exceptions, are utterly forgotten.

And we, too, will soon have passed, and our little brains which have forgotten so much will be forgotten.  We shall be throttled out of the world and pressed by the clumsy hands of Death into the mould of that same rubbish-hill of oblivion, unless there be a stronger hand to save us.  We shall be cast aside, and left behind by the hurrying crowd, unless there be those who will see to it that our soul, like that of John Brown, goes marching along.  There is only one human force stronger than death, and that force is History, By it the dead are made to live again:  history is the salvation of the mortal man as religion is the salvation of his immortal life.