Today's Stichomancy for Kurt Vonnegut

became such that I marvel at the amount of self-control we retained. Danforth was frankly jumpy, and began making some offensively irrelevant speculations about the horror at the camp - which I resented all the more because I could not help sharing certain conclusions forced upon us by many features of this morbid survival from nightmare antiquity. The speculations worked on his imagination, too; for in one place - where a debris-littered alley turned a sharp corner - he insisted that he saw faint traces of ground markings which he did not like; whilst elsewhere he stopped to listen to a subtle, imaginary sound from some undefined point - a muffled musical piping, he said, not unlike that of the wind

At the Mountains of Madness

Went forth again with both my friends. We rode Many a long league back to the North. At last From hills, that looked across a land of hope, We dropt with evening on a rustic town Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, Close at the boundary of the liberties; There, entered an old hostel, called mine host To council, plied him with his richest wines, And showed the late-writ letters of the king.

He with a long low sibilation, stared As blank as death in marble; then exclaimed

fortune as I have to your pleasures? If you were not so far away, and so unhappy, I would blame you for that impertinence. Why lower your wife in that way? Good heavens! what induced me to go into society at all?--to flatter your vanity; I adorned myself for you, as you well know. If I did wrong, I am punished, cruelly; your absence is a harsh expiation of our mutual life.

Perhaps my happiness was too complete; it had to be paid by some great trial--and here it is. There is nothing now for me but solitude. Yes, I shall live at Lanstrac, the place your father laid out, the house you yourself refurnished so luxuriously. There I shall live, with my mother and my child, and await you,--sending

was accustomed to write with care, the ship's log-book. I turned my back squarely on the desk. And even then Jacques never offered a word. "Well, what do you say?" I asked at last. "Is it worth finishing?" This question expressed exactly the whole of my thoughts.

"Distinctly," he answered in his sedate, veiled voice and then coughed a little.

"Were you interested?" I inquired further almost in a whisper.

"Very much!"

In a pause I went on meeting instinctively the heavy rolling of the ship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch. The curtain

Some Reminiscences