Today's Stichomancy for Robert A. Heinlein

Now, then, I ask you this; could I expect--could I believe--could I even remotely imagine--that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add those quite unnecessary fifteen words to his test?--set a trap for me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own town before my own people assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible. His test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I had no shadow of doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not have expected a base betrayal from one whom you had befriended and against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

Soon after this my father came to know Fet intimately, and they struck up a firm and lasting friendship, and established a correspondence which lasted almost till Fet's death. It was only during the last years of Fet's life, when my father was entirely absorbed in his new ideas, which were so at variance with Afanásyi Afanásyevitch's whole philosophy of life, that they became estranged and met more rarely. It was at Fet's, at Stepánovka, that my father and Turgénieff quarreled. Before the railway was made, when people still had to drive, Fet, on his way into Moscow, always used to turn in at

nothing against me."

"All is discovered," said Christophe; "you are fortunate to be saved from the fray."

"We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the queen-mother during their journey. Happily La Renaudie was cleverer than I; he managed to escape. You had only just left us when the Guise men surprised us--"

"But I don't know La Renaudie."

"Pooh! my brother has told me all about it," said the captain.

Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further

cities when we should be out on the hillside with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our birthright for a mess of facts.

CYRIL. There is something in what you say, and there is no doubt that whatever amusement we may find in reading a purely model novel, we have rarely any artistic pleasure in re-reading it. And this is perhaps the best rough test of what is literature and what is not. If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all. But what do you say about the return to Life and Nature? This is the panacea that is always being recommended to us.