The Inner Life

back to avoid being struck, for instinctively I felt it to be a poisonous one. Then when at a little distance I looked and saw it to be a spread-head viper.

“Well!” I said to myself, “I will walk around to the other side; this little snake can be let alone—there is enough here for us both.”

So around I walked a few steps and once more stooped with outstretched hand to grasp some new bills of the same value.

Whif! Goodness! Before I had reached half way down and while I was in a crouching position, out came the head of another snake. It came out in a flash, raising its head some twelve inches above the money, and I had just time to straighten up, to avoid being struck.

“Well! I’ll be more careful,” and I walked a few feet further, still intending to load up my pockets, thinking the snake episode only natural as snakes usually go in pairs. Again as before I made another attempt, only to be balked in the same way by a third snake.

“Funny—funny—funny!” I soliloquized. So on I went with the repetition of the same experience at every step, going completely around the pile, only to be baffled at every attempt.

When I had completed the circle, I stood for a moment pondering on my next move, and as I did so my eyes looked out on the open stretch of country beyond. After a bit of reverie I turned again and on looking, what was my amazement to see the heads of snakes coming out all over the pile! There seemed to be a snake for every piece of money, or even more,—it seemed as if there were intertwined within each coin and bill coils upon coils of living, squirming snakes. Then there came a noise—a steady rhythmic hissing. Then as I looked on I saw that the whole mass, or pile, was moving, and its motion was something like a big, seething, fermenting mixture of money and snakes, and the hissing became more and more pronounced. It seethed and hissed—little and big snakes adding to the hiss—hiss—hiss.

Then a voice as from different world said to me, “Look at that mass and get the lesson. That which you see is money—that what your humanity calls a ‘medium of exchange.’ Little do they know of its spirit. Little do they know that the poison that lurks in its constitution. It being the symbol of material power, and