Today's Stichomancy for Will Wright

pride of my heart to save the IPSA CORPORA of the first score of guineas I could hoard, and to have them converted into as tasteful a snuff-box as Rundell and Bridge could devise. This I had thrust for security into the breast of my waistcoat, while, impatient to transfer it to the person for whom it was destined, I hastened to his house in Brown Square. When the front of the house became visible a feeling of alarm checked me. I had been long absent from Scotland; my friend was some years older than I; he might have been called to the congregation of the just. I paused, and gazed on the house as if I had hoped to form some conjecture from the outward appearance concerning the state of

the infancy of our foreign trade. When a business rival gives you the glad hand and asks fondly after the children, beware lest the ensuing emotions cost you money.

"No: our distrust for England has not its life and being in pernicious textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to our intelligence-- even grudges cannot live without real food. Should England become helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would die to-morrow, because we would know that she had it no longer in her power to injure us. Therein lies the feeling--the textbooks merely echo it....

"In my opinion, a navy somewhat larger than England's would practically eliminate from America that 'Ancient Grudge' you deplore. It is England's

wish me to stay away, I shall do so. If you let me come back, I--oh! you will let me come back?"

He cast one appealing glance at her, to which she made no response. Alcee Arobin's manner was so genuine that it often deceived even himself.

Edna did not care or think whether it were genuine or not. When she was alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had kissed so warmly. Then she leaned her head down on the mantelpiece. She felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without being wholly awakened from its

Awakening & Selected Short Stories

mad with joy; we drew him from his quandary by giving him the name of our landlady and telling him to take the lobster and the crab to her house.

"Do you earn enough to live on?" I asked the man, in order to discover the cause of his evident penury.

"With great hardships, and always poorly," he replied. "Fishing on the coast, when one hasn't a boat or deep-sea nets, nothing but pole and line, is a very uncertain business. You see we have to wait for the fish, or the shell-fish; whereas a real fisherman puts out to sea for them. It is so hard to earn a living this way that I'm the only man in these parts who fishes along-shore. I spend whole days without getting