Today's Stichomancy for Ken Nordine

living with words. But farmers and iron workers know what it is that turns clods into corn and what makes the iron wheels that bear it to market. It is muscle applied with the favor of God.

Without labor, no crops. Without rain, no crops. It was world-wide crop failures that finally brought the lean years of the nineties. The return of big crops was already reviving the sick world. It rejected the radicals' "remedy" and next year it was well. Had we taken that wrong medicine in the dark it would have killed us. Thirty years later Russia let them shoot that medicine into her arm and it paralyzed her. The rain falls upon her fields and the soil is rich, but it brings forth no harvest

sparkled as it was poured out, and went bubbling down the throat; while, of other sorts, the purple liquor was so clear that you could see the wrought figures at the bottom of the goblet. While the servants supplied the two and twenty guests with food and drink, the hostess and her four maidens went from one throne to another, exhorting them to eat their fill, and to quaff wine abundantly, and thus to recompense them- selves, at this one banquet, for the many days when they had gone without a dinner. But whenever the mariners were not looking at them (which was pretty often, as they looked chiefly into the basins and platters), the beautiful woman and her damsels turned

Tanglewood Tales

resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously

The next minute saw me hurrying with rapid strides in the direction of Wildfell Hall - to what intent or purpose I could scarcely tell, but I must be moving somewhere, and no other goal would do - I must see her too, and speak to her - that was certain; but what to say, or how to act, I had no definite idea. Such stormy thoughts - so many different resolutions crowded in upon me, that my mind was little better than a chaos of conflicting passions.

CHAPTER XII

In little more than twenty minutes the journey was accomplished. I paused at the gate to wipe my streaming forehead, and recover my breath and some degree of composure. Already the rapid walking had

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall