Today's Stichomancy for Sophia Loren

housework in drab garments and soiled boudoir caps that hid a multitude of unkempt heads. They seemed to find a great deal of time for amiable, empty gabbling From seven to four you might see a pair of boudoir caps leaning from opposite bedroom windows, conversing across back porches, pausing in the task of sweeping front steps, standing at a street corner, laden with grocery bundles. Minnie wasted hours in what she called "running over to Ma's for a minute." The two quarreled a great deal, being so nearly of a nature. But the very qualities that combated each other seemed, by some strange chemical process, to bring them together as well.

One Basket

call it now--goes down before them. Babylon itself goes down, after that world-famed siege which ended in Belshazzar's feast; and when Cyrus died--still in the prime of life, the legends seem to say--he left a coherent and well-organised empire, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Hindostan.

So runs the tale, which to me, I confess, sounds probable and rational enough. It may not do so to you; for it has not to many learned men. They are inclined to "relegate it into the region of myth;" in plain English, to call old Herodotus a liar, or at least a dupe. What means those wise men can have at this distance of more than 2000 years, of knowing more about the matter than Herodotus,

chair at the head of the table, to say in a grave murmur, "The captain asks for one more slice of meat and two potatoes." We, his officers, could hear him moving about in his berth, or lightly snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as it were. It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character that the answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly tone. Some commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound of your voice as an injury and an insult.

But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the

The Mirror of the Sea

And court the fair eyed dew, to take me to her shining tent The weeping virgin, trembling kneels before the risen sun. Till we arise link'd in a golden band and never part: But walk united bearing food to all our tender flowers.

Dost thou O little cloud? I fear that I am not like thee: For I walk through the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers: But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds, But I feed not the warbling birds, they fly and seek their food: But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv'd, Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.

Poems of William Blake