My own soul became as the tabernacle of God. All tears were wiped away by the conqueror of sorrow and pain and death. I had found the Father; the Father a son; and I entered into the place where God is the Light. In the meantime Rome burned. The fire, started by Nero's soldiers near the Palatine Hill, spread from house to house and quarter to quarter until it reached my couch. The old shell parted and burned as tinder. Then the mortal put on immortality and the shackled darkness of the old soul gave place to light and liberty. I awoke. It was near twilight; the world seemed new and fresh, but it was the old home place. I bent over and examined my couch; it was the old slab shelf of the springhouse. Looking along its raised edge, which I had used as a pillow, I noticed for the first time crude strange characters or letters cut in the stone. That night I asked my father the history of the slab. He said he had brought it from the Stoner Creek farm near Wade's Mill, where it had been plowed up in cultivating over a small Indian mound. I came to the conclusion the slab possessed weird properties, making it a restless and unsatisfactory couch, and thereafter I called it the dream bench. DOCTOR BROWN OF DANVILLE. Incidentally I took up stenography, its usefulness having been impressed upon me by my inability to transcribe the narrative of the feeble-minded black boy. The winter following his death, attending law school at the University of Virginia, I continued its study and practice and found it quite an aid in jotting down the lectures. By the following summer I had grown to be quite an efficient stenographer. That summer, shortly after I had my disturbing dream as a priest of Osiris, the Kentucky synod of the Southern Presbyterian Church met at Winchester. My mother, a member of the First Presbyterian Church, entertained two of the visiting preachers, both of whom were personal friends of Doctor Chisholm. One was from the western portion of the State, I believe Owensboro, the other, Doctor Brown, of Danville. Doctor Brown rarely smiled; his poise was indicative of the utmost self-control, his form lank, his hair heavy and graying at the temples, his general appearance giving evidence of a clean, active ascetic life and a strong moral and physical make-up. He was inclined to keep the light of his conversational powers under a bushel, and at times spoke only when aroused from apparent self-centered thought. His voice was deep and pleasant, his diction and expression perfect, his thoughts, clothed in finished sentences, were entertainingly expressed and at times exhibited a rich vein of the choicest humor. He was the leading member of the conference--certainly the brainiest--and it fell to his lot to deliver the most important address of the gathering.