Today's Stichomancy for Kurt Vonnegut

compare their society to the curious spectacle presented by a school - ushers, monitors, and big and little boys - qualified by one circumstance, the introduction of the other sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with wasp- like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we

There is the danger of identifying language, not with thoughts but with ideas. (4) There is the error of supposing that the analysis of grammar and logic has always existed, or that their distinctions were familiar to Socrates and Plato. (5) There is the fallacy of exaggerating, and also of diminishing the interval which separates articulate from inarticulate language--the cries of animals from the speech of man--the instincts of animals from the reason of man. (6) There is the danger which besets all enquiries into the early history of man--of interpreting the past by the present, and of substituting the definite and intelligible for the true but dim outline which is the horizon of human knowledge.

The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We

that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire * may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, * and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your * feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you.' " *

"It is evident by this," added Jane, "that he comes back no more this winter."

"It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he SHOULD."

"Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his own master. But you do not know ALL. I WILL read you the passage which particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves

Pride and Prejudice

Day and Leap Year's Day were made holidays, and did not count at all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was decided to 'nail down Easter.' . . . In these matters, as in so many matters, the new civilisation came as a simplification of ancient complications; the history of the calendar throughout the world is a history of inadequate adjustments, of attempts to fix seed-time and midwinter that go back into the very beginning of human society; and this final rectification had a symbolic value quite beyond its practical convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh

The Last War: A World Set Free