V 

 THE RAVEN'S NEST 



After all, the Rosicrucians were an ignorant lot. 

 They spent their days over alembics, cucurbits, and 

 crucibles — yet they grew old. In our days many 

 men— and a few women — have discovered the 

 Elixir of Youth — but never indoors. The prescrip- 

 tion is a simple one. Mix a hobby with plenty of 

 sky-air, shake well, and take twice a week. I know a 

 railroad official who retired when he was seventy. 

 "He'll die soon," observed his friends kindly. 

 Instead, he began to collect native orchids from all 

 points of the compass. Now he is too busy tramping 

 over mountains and through woods and marshes 

 even to think of dying. Anyway, he would not have 

 time until he has found the ram's-head and the 

 crane's-bill orchids and finished his monograph on 

 the Habenaria. He will never grow old. 



Neither will that other friend of mine who collects 

 fresh-water pearls, nor the one who makes me visit 

 black-snake and rattlesnake dens with him every 

 spring, nor those others who spend their time in 

 collecting butterflies, beetles, wasps, and similar 

 bric-a-brac. As for those four abandoned oologists 

 who have hunted with me for years, they will be 

 young at a hundred. They rank high in their respec- 

 tive callings. Yet from February, when the great 



