Today's Stichomancy for Robert Anton Wilson

the last of three, presenting Neil Paraday to the human race. His new book, the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two out, and THE EMPIRE, already aware of it, fired, as if on the birth of a prince, a salute of a whole column. The guns had been booming these three hours in the house without our suspecting them. The big blundering newspaper had discovered him, and now he was proclaimed and anointed and crowned. His place was assigned him as publicly as if a fat usher with a wand had pointed to the topmost chair; he was to pass up and still up, higher and higher, between the watching faces and the envious sounds - away up to the dais and the throne. The article was "epoch-making," a landmark in his

swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys on the water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass. But the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught- horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its

there noted to be very medicinable against the stone in the reins. These be a part of the commendations which some philosophical brains have bestowed upon the freshwater Perch: yet they commend the Sea-Perch which is known by having but one fin on his back, of which they say we English see but a few, to be a much better fish.

The Perch grows slowly, yet will grow, as I have been credibly informed, to be almost two feet long; for an honest informer told me, such a one was not long since taken by Sir Abraham Williams, a gentleman of worth, and a brother of the angle, that yet lives, and I wish he may: this was a deep-bodied fish, and doubtless durst have devoured a Pike of half his own length. For I have told you, he is a bold fish; such

doubtless she could get word to them, but how was I to communicate with her? Would she come to see me before I was killed? It seemed incredible that she should not make some slight attempt to befriend me; yet, as I recalled, she had made no effort to speak with me after we had reached the village. She had hastened to her mother the moment she had been liberated. Though she had returned with the old queen, she had not spoken to me, even then. I began to have my doubts.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely friendless except for the old queen. For some unaccountable

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