Today's Stichomancy for Russell Crowe

There was no time to lose.

"Steward," I thundered. My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation. This was the sort of thing that made my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger. I had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a confidential air to the carpenter. It was too far to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new captain.

"Yes, sir," the pale-faced steward turned resignedly to me. It was this maddening course of being shouted at, checked without

The Secret Sharer

Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jam in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners - these are the advance signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter upon his dreary fields.

But these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is spring arrived and the

The Voice of the City

of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from audacious wealth to the utmost misery. They throw themselves into the clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of recovering what they have lost--a cash-box to draw upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked (another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for Esther.

And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of affairs when, in the Champs-Elysees--that bustling and mongrel bazaar --they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before

whole world would induce me to live under the same roof as Lord Windermere. You fill me with horror. There is something about you that stirs the wildest - rage within me. And I know why you are here. My husband sent you to lure me back that I might serve as a blind to whatever relations exist between you and him.

MRS. ERLYNNE. Oh! You don't think that - you can't.

LADY WINDERMERE. Go back to my husband, Mrs. Erlynne. He belongs to you and not to me. I suppose he is afraid of a scandal. Men are such cowards. They outrage every law of the world, and are afraid of the world's tongue. But he had better prepare himself. He shall have a scandal. He shall have the worst scandal there has