Hire your workmen for certain stipulated wages, and not for longer periods than twenty-four hours at a time.

Give them higher wages than they would receive elsewhere, and be prompt and ready in your payments." Many accounts are given by alchemical writers of the agent, and many names are bestowed on it.

The author of _A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_ speaks thus of the agent--"It is our doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil, urine, maydew, mother, egg, secret furnace, oven, true fire, venomous dragon, Theriac, ardent wine, Green Lion, Bird of Hermes, Goose of Hermogenes, two-edged sword in the hand of the Cherub that guards the Tree of Life....

It is our true secret vessel, and the Garden of the Sages in which our sun rises and sets.
It is our Royal Mineral, our triumphant vegetable Saturnia, and the magic rod of Hermes, by means of which he assumes any shape he likes." Sometimes we are told that the agent is mercury, sometimes that it is gold, but not common mercury or common gold.

"Supplement your common mercury with the inward fire which it needs, and you will soon get rid of all superfluous dross." "The agent is gold, as highly matured as natural and artificial digestion can make it, and a thousand times more perfect than the common metal of that name.