Today's Stichomancy for Michael Jackson

"If the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here with our army, with whom would be the advantage? How should one best advance to meet him, keeping the ranks? If we should wish to retreat, how ought we to pursue?" And he would set forth to them, as he went, all the chances that could befall an army; he would listen to their opinion and state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual discussions there could never arise, in time of war, any unexpected circumstances that he could not deal with.

[*] Philopoemen, "the last of the Greeks," born 252 B.C., died 183 B.C.

But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and

The Prince

Diarmid--And you, gentle Thane--the report of the camp says, that you would purchase with life and lands the tidings that Annot Lyle was no daughter of proscription, but of a race noble in your estimation as your own--Well--It is for no love I tell you--The time has been that I would have exchanged this secret against liberty; I am now bartering it for what is dearer than liberty or life.--Annot Lyle is the youngest, the sole surviving child of the Knight of Ardenvohr, who alone was saved when all in his halls besides was given to blood and ashes."

"Can this man speak truth?" said Annot Lyle, scarce knowing what she said; "or is this some strange delusion?"

as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato understood him: that he really said [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], that when he thought of the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and that his last word when he cried out 'my life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment, has been perfected,' was exactly as St. John tells us it was: [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] - no more.

While in reading the Gospels - particularly that of St. John himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle - I see

and he heard the creaking of rusty hinges. The mysterious visitor had entered the mill. Hiram crept softly to the window and looked out. The moon shone full on the dusty, shingled face of the old mill, not thirty steps away, and he saw that the door was standing wide open. A second or two of stillness followed, and then, as he still stood looking intently, he saw the figure of a man suddenly appear, sharp and vivid, from the gaping blackness of the open doorway. Hiram could see his face as clear as day. It was Levi West, and he carried an empty meal bag over his arm.

Levi West stood looking from right to left for a second or two,

Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates