Today's Stichomancy for Ridley Scott

everywhere more exposed, of the wind always louder and bleaker, of the black, roaring winters, of the gloom of high-lying, old stone cities, imminent on the windy seaboard; compared with the level streets, the warm colouring of the brick, the domestic quaintness of the architecture, among which English children begin to grow up and come to themselves in life. As the stage of the University approaches, the contrast becomes more express. The English lad goes to Oxford or Cambridge; there, in an ideal world of gardens, to lead a semi-scenic life, costumed, disciplined and drilled by proctors. Nor is this to be regarded merely as a stage of education; it is a piece of privilege besides, and a step that

could scarce measure it. Just where it winds about the northwest of the city are some of its most beautiful bits, orange groves on one side, and quaint old Spanish gardens on the other. Who cares that the bridges are modern, and that here and there pert boat-houses rear their prim heads? It is the bayou, even though it be invaded with the ruthless vandalism of the improving idea, and can a boat-house kill the beauty of a moss-grown centurion of an oak with a history as old as the city? Can an iron bridge with tarantula piers detract from the song of a mocking-bird in a fragrant orange grove? We know that farther out, past the Confederate Soldiers' Home,--that rose-embowered, rambling place

The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories

The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon.

Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the strange. "I thank you. You will never know what you have done for me."

"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set great store on a new organ."

Padre Ignacio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he had reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he resumed to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the

Down to the chin, a shadow at his side; I think that he had risen on his knees.

Round me he gazed, as if solicitude He had to see if some one else were with me, But after his suspicion was all spent,

Weeping, he said to me: "If through this blind Prison thou goest by loftiness of genius, Where is my son? and why is he not with thee?"

And I to him: "I come not of myself; He who is waiting yonder leads me here, Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had."

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)