If we would learn of nature we must retire to her solitudes and let no one intrude. The dearest and nearest may draw with well meaning hands an opaque vail between us and the sun. In the solitude of the forest, by the shores of the sullen sea, and in the depths of star-lit night, we rest as dwarfs, overpowered by the stupendous elements, yet the center of all forces and phenomena. We are in the vortex of creative energies, and if we silently question, the answers fall as soon as our minds are receptive to them. In its adoration of the boundless, the soul mirrors its own infinitude. The shoreless expanse of sea, with sky and wave blending, lost in mist, in the never-reached horizon; the depths of stars, beyond and beyond, in vistas leading out into absolute void, beyond all created things--to such the soul acknowledges kinship, and in them finds its satisfaction. The thoughts of the stars are untongued, but they vibrate across the limitless ether, and are eloquent to the receptive mind. Immeasurably more needful of receptivity born of silence, is the contact with the infinite realm of spirit. The ocean of being, invisible, is before us. We may not dictate, nor with blatant cry make demands. We shall be grateful for a grain of manna from the heavenly skies; we may gather a full repast. As spiritual beings, into the warp and woof of whose existence enter the strands of immortal life, we are capable of comprehending the laws of this unseen, and heretofore unknown universe. As suns are pulsating centers of light, spiritual beings are pulsating centers of thought, and as light waves go out circling until lost on the remotest coast line of the universe, so thought-waves go out from the thinking mind, and are caught up by all minds receptive to them. By the sea, the soul sees the inner world expressed by a series of changing pictures. The ships sailing from harbor, with all their white sails set, and bent to the breeze which wafts them into the gray mist until lost to view, express the voyage of human beings. The white birds, with flapping wings, are the purposeless spirits of the air. The stars, what consolation they have given the wretched in long ages of suffering, by their eternal placidity, their quietude from the feverish follies which we know intuitively belong to a lower life.