Today's Stichomancy for Louis B. Mayer

that were now the talk of the whole countryside. He laid two and two together, and the four he found them make afforded him some hope. Then he realized - as he might have realized before had he been shrewder - that Richard's mood was one that made him ripe for any villainy. He thought that he was much in error if a treachery existed so black that Richard would quail before it, if it but afforded him the means of ridding himself and the world of Mr. Wilding. He was considering how best to approach the subject, when it happened that one night when Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative through excess of wine. It happened naturally enough that Richard sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard.

Walks in the valley, and each morn over me spreads his hand Saying, rejoice thou humble grass, thou new-born lily flower. Thou gentle maid of silent valleys and of modest brooks: For thou shall be clothed in light, and fed with morning manna: Till summers heat melts thee beside the fountains and the springs To flourish in eternal vales: they why should Thel complain. Why should the mistress of the vales of Har, utter a sigh.

She ceasd & smild in tears, then sat down in her silver shrine.

Thel answerd, O thou little virgin of the peaceful valley. Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless, the o'er tired The breath doth nourish the innocent lamb, he smells the milky garments

Poems of William Blake

scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine, of mill-owners and mill hands?

A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,--he thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to live, to love! Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and

Life in the Iron-Mills

Were better than good news.

"It is the hour of man: new purposes, Broad shouldered, press against the world's slow gate; And voices from the vast eternities Publish the soul's austere apostolate.

Man bursts the chains that his own hands have made; Hurls down the blind, fierce gods that in blind years He fashioned, and a power upon them laid To bruise his heart and shake his soul with fears." --Edwin Markham.

CHAPTER 18