Today's Stichomancy for Philip K. Dick

simple that they are afraid of using it. Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid, because the public can never find expression for anything. The artist is never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects. To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.'

the hotel lounge. She was a woman of perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, slenderly built, with a warm reddish skin and very abundant fair golden hair, the wife of a petulant-looking heavy- faced man of perhaps fifty-three, who smoked a cigar and dozed over his coffee and presently went to bed. "He always goes to bed like that," she confided startlingly. "He sleeps after all his meals. I never knew such a man to sleep."

Then she returned to our talk, whatever it was.

We had begun at the dinner table with itineraries and the usual topographical talk, and she had envied our pedestrian travel. "My husband doesn't walk," she said. "His heart is weak and he cannot

"Hurted mine self welly much!" sobbed the poor little fellow.

"I'm so sorry, darling! How ever did you manage to hurt yourself so?"

"Course I managed it!" said Bruno, laughing through his tears. "Doos oo think nobody else but oo ca'n't manage things?"

Matters were looking distinctly brighter, now Bruno had begun to argue. "Come, let's hear all about it!" I said.

"My foot took it into its head to slip--" Bruno began.

"A foot hasn't got a head!" Sylvie put in, but all in vain.

"I slipted down the bank. And I tripted over a stone. And the stone hurted my foot! And I trod on a Bee. And the Bee stinged my finger!" Poor Bruno sobbed again. The complete list of woes was too much for

Sylvie and Bruno

'Why, rascal?' I asked.

'To wash with,' he answered.

'I asked for some yesterday, and you would not bring it,' I grumbled. 'However, better late than never. Bring it now. If I must hang, I will hang like a gentleman. But depend upon it, the Cardinal will not serve an old friend so scurvy a trick.'

'You are to go to him,' he announced, when he came back with the water.

'What? To the Cardinal?' I cried.

'Yes,' he answered.

'Good!' I exclaimed; and in my joy and relief I sprang up at