Today's Stichomancy for Oscar Wilde

requires a little of the artistic temperament, of which Mr. T. S., C.E., possesses some, whatever he may say. I can't look at it practically however: that will come, I suppose, like grey hair or coffin nails.

Our pole is snapped: a fortnight's work and the loss of the Norse schooner all for nothing! - except experience and dirty clothes. - Your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.

Letter: TO MRS. CHURCHILL BABINGTON

[SWANSTON COTTAGE, LOTHIANBURN, SUMMER 1871.]

MY DEAR MAUD, - If you have forgotten the hand-writing - as is like

with their windings of white. The conical roofs of the heptagonal temples, the staircases, terraces, and ramparts were being carved by degrees upon the paleness of the dawn; and a girdle of white foam rocked around the Carthaginian peninsula, while the emerald sea appeared as if it were curdled in the freshness of the morning. Then as the rosy sky grew larger, the lofty houses, bending over the sloping soil, reared and massed themselves like a herd of black goats coming down from the mountains. The deserted streets lengthened; the palm-trees that topped the walls here and there were motionless; the brimming cisterns seemed like silver bucklers lost in the courts; the beacon on the promontory of Hermaeum was beginning to grow pale. The

Salammbo

galaxy of stars over him; then he stepped into the long grass, and made his way in a direction opposite to that in which the camp lay. But after a short while he turned, and made his way down into the river bed. He walked in it for a while. Then after a time he sat down upon the bank and took off his heavy boots and threw them into the grass at the side. Then softly, on tip-toe, he followed the little footpath that the men had trodden going down to the river for water. It led straight up to the Captain's tent, and the little flat-topped tree, with its white stem, and its two gnarled branches spread out on either side. When he was within forty paces of it, he paused. Far over the other side of the camp the two men who were on guard stood chatting by the fire. A dead stillness was

A deaf man, seeing the inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks, and, above all, the heavenly serenity which ecstasy stamped on his proud and noble countenance, would have supposed that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural because the performance of this mad music required immense executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have worked at it for years.

Nor were his hands alone employed; his feet were constantly at work with complicated pedaling; his body swayed to and fro; the perspiration poured down his face while he toiled to produce a great

Gambara