Today's Stichomancy for Lewis Carroll

playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of

distinguish between sham and truth because he has been obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers on the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave him his start, although he makes more money in a single week outside the office than his salary would amount to in half a year. He says that this is a job that does not interfere with his work."

Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman ever had. He possesses a genius for friendship, and a wonderful understanding of suffering, born of those years of hardship and privation. Each learned the other's

sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature; and the same prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relics of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing; but when she was called upon to make a choice, when Castanier asked her, "Which do you like?" she would answer, "Why, this is the nicest!" Love never counts the cost, and Castanier therefore always took the "nicest."

When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but

"We're not going to lose," I retorted angrily. "Nobody has left yet. We are still ahead on the books."

He came over and shook a finger in my face.

"Nobody has left--and why? Because they're all taking a series of baths. Wait until they've had their fifteen, or twenty-one, or whatever the cure is, and then see them run!"

It was true enough; I knew it.

CHAPTER XV

THE PRINCE, WITH APOLOGIES

Tillie brought the supper basket for the shelter-house about six o'clock and sat down for a minute by the fire. She said Mr.