Today's Stichomancy for Friedrich Nietzsche

have your heart set, I perceive, upon poetry. At Dreux, I have a friend, one Monsieur Bril--Georges Bril. He lives in a little cleared space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits Paris each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when the catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars, and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and let him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or give your attention to your wife and business."

"Write the letter," said David, "I am sorry you did not speak of this

STRANGER: Plaything is the name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: That one name may be fitly predicated of all of them, for none of these things have a serious purpose--amusement is their sole aim.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That again I understand.

STRANGER: Then there is a class which provides materials for all these, out of which and in which the arts already mentioned fabricate their works;--this manifold class, I say, which is the creation and offspring of many other arts, may I not rank sixth?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I am referring to gold, silver, and other metals, and all that

Statesman

life couldn't be called anything but a thin partition. Mrs. Jordan's imagination quite did away with the thickness.

Our young lady had not taken up the charge, had dealt with it good- humouredly, just because she knew so well what to think of it. It was at once one of her most cherished complaints and most secret supports that people didn't understand her, and it was accordingly a matter of indifference to her that Mrs. Jordan shouldn't; even though Mrs. Jordan, handed down from their early twilight of gentility and also the victim of reverses, was the only member of her circle in whom she recognised an equal. She was perfectly aware that her imaginative life was the life in which she spent

lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.

But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the American artillery.

From the Earth to the Moon