Today's Stichomancy for Groucho Marx

As Christmas approached, the usual mysteries began to haunt the house, and Jo frequently convulsed the family by proposing utterly impossible or magnificently absurd ceremonies, in honor of this unusually merry Christmas. Laurie was equally impracticable, and would have had bonfires, skyrockets, and triumphal arches, if he had had his own way. After many skirmishes and snubbings, the ambitious pair were considered effectually quenched and went about with forlorn faces, which were rather belied by explosions of laughter when the two got together.

Several days of unusually mild weather fitly ushered in a splendid Christmas Day. Hannah `felt in her bones' that it was

Little Women

I never thought of such a thing; but I begged Mr. Thorpe so earnestly to stop; I called out to him as soon as ever I saw you; now, Mrs. Allen, did not-- Oh! You were not there; but indeed I did; and, if Mr. Thorpe would only have stopped, I would have jumped out and run after you."

Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration? Henry Tilney at least was not. With a yet sweeter smile, he said everything that need be said of his sister's concern, regret, and dependence on Catherine's honour. "Oh! Do not say Miss Tilney was not angry," cried Catherine, "because I know she was;

Northanger Abbey

The boy, who was raking dry leaves, stood gazing at them with a shrewd, whimsical expression. He was the old man's grandson.

"Is that a boy or a girl kid, grandpa?" he inquired, when the gardener returned.

"Hold your tongue!" replied the old man, irascibly. Suddenly he seized the boy by his two thin little shoulders with knotted old hands.

"Look at here, Tommy, whatever you know, you keep your mouth shet, and whatever you don't know, you keep your mouth shet, if you know what's good for you," he said, in a fierce whisper.

The boy whistled and shrugged his shoulders loose. "You know I

meadow, vari-colored, awash. All that day we watched it. It came toward us from the west; we ran through it from the east. Now it thinned away; now it thickened until it seemed that the sea was strewn with rushes like a castle floor. With oars we caught and brought into ship wreaths of it. All night we sailed in this strange plain. A yellow dawn showed it still on either side the _Santa Maria_, and thicker, with fewer blue sea straits and passes than on yesterday. The Pinta and the Nina stood out with a strange, enchanted look, as ships crossing a plain more vast than the plain of Andalusia. Still that floating weed thickened. The