" The juice of this
plant, if boiled with quicksilver, has only to be thrown over one
hundred ounces of copper, to change them instantly into fine gold.
Paracelsus' directions for making the Philosopher's Stone are very
simple: "Take the rosy-coloured blood of the lion, and gluten from
the eagle. Mix them together, and the Philosopher's Stone is
thine. Seek the lion in the west, and the eagle in the south."
What could be clearer? Any child could make sufficient
Philosopher's Stones from this simple recipe to pave a street
with--a most useful asset, by the way, to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer at the present time, for every bicycle, omnibus and
motor-lorry driving over the Philosopher Stone-paved street would
instantly be changed automatically into pure gold, and the
National Debt could be satisfactorily liquidated in this fashion
in no time.
Whenever I returned home on leave, whether from Berlin, Petrograd,
Lisbon, or Buenos Ayres, I invariably spent a portion of my leave
at Glamis Castle. This venerable pile, "whose birth tradition
notes not," though the lower portions were undoubtedly standing in
1016, rears its forest of conical turrets in the broad valley
lying between the Grampians and the Sidlaws, in the fertile plains
of Forfarshire.
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