Today's Stichomancy for Peter O'Toole

"Your old Muvver Jim."

Douglas laid the letter gently on the table, his hand still resting upon it. He looked helplessly at the little, shrunken figure in the opposite chair. Polly had made no sound, but her head had slipped lower and lower and she now sat very quietly with her face in her hands. She had been taught by Toby and Jim never to whimper.

"What a plucky lot they are," thought Douglas, as he considered these three lonely souls, each accepting whatever fate brought with no rebellion or even surprise. It was a strange world of stoics in which these children of the amusement arena fought and

in those, that are strong on both sides. I commend also standing commissions; as for trade, for treas- ure, for war, for suits, for some provinces; for where there be divers particular counsels, and but one counsel of estate (as it is in Spain), they are, in effect, no more than standing commissions: save that they have greater authority. Let such as are to inform counsels, out of their particular profes- sions (as lawyers, seamen, mintmen, and the like) be first heard before committees; and then, as oc- casion serves, before the counsel. And let them not

Essays of Francis Bacon

That night as he lay securely bound in the corner of a lodge, and the long hours wore slowly away, he strained at his stout bonds, and in his mind revolved different plans of escape. It was not in this man's nature to despair; while he had life he would fight. From time to time he expanded his muscles, striving to loosen the wet buckskin thongs.

The dark hours slowly passed, no sound coming to him save the distant bark of a dog and the monotonous tread of his guard; a dim grayness pervaded the lodge. Dawn was close at hand--his hour was nearly come.

Suddenly his hearing, trained to a most acute sensibility, caught a faint sound, almost inaudible. It came from without on the other side of the lodge. There it was again, a slight tearing sound, such as is caused by a knife when

The Spirit of the Border

a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if they were vast desert places, in spite of what his toes are. He strode magnificently, tri- umphantly, to the window and flung the shade up and looked out at the amorphous mist creep- ing in across the roofs. The crawling fog must have suggested his great, gray Dread, for presently he turned away with a shudder and sank upon a couch and moaned.