Today's Stichomancy for Robert Anton Wilson

burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are high- waymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them -- except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed."

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Well," he says, "I don't see anything the matter. What do you lack?"

"Lack! Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my hymn-book, and my palm branch - I lack everything that a body naturally requires up here, my friend."

Puzzled? Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw. Finally he says -

"Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you. I never heard of these things before."

I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says -

"Now, I hope you don't take it as an offence, for I don't mean any,

'I am inspired,' when he was not inspired at all? and who says, 'I will bring down the like of what God has sent down;' but didst thou see when the unjust are in the floods of death, and the angels stretch forth their hands, 'Give ye forth your souls; to-day shall ye be recompensed with the torment of disgrace, for that ye did say against God what was not true, and were too proud to hear His signs And ye come now single-handed as we created you at first, and ye have left behind your backs that which we granted you; and we see not with you your intercessors whom ye pretended were partners amongst you; betwixt you have the ties been cut asunder; and strayed away from you is what ye did pretend.'

The Koran