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I lit a cigarette. Jerry smoked a pipe once in awhile but never cigarettes. We began to talk. Eventually I remembered that I had thrown the I Ching the day before, a Chinese fortune telling instrument and book of wisdom, wherein one throws three coins six times, in which the various tails-odd-three and heads-even-two combinations, produce six lines as some combination of odd straight ____ or even broken __ __. The interpretation of the six lines from the Book of Changes answers one's question.
So I told Jerry that I had thrown the I Ching. He asked me what question I had asked. I said I had asked: 'how to get rich?'. The place had been so noisy I could hardly make myself heard to Jerry sitting right next to me. Suddenly the place became as stock-still silent as a vault. As the saying goes you could hear a pin drop. I was shocked. I felt like I was on stage and a thousand people were waiting to hear my answer. After a pause in which the place was suspended, I stammered: it said accumulate. Accumulate! he answered a little louder. ACCUMULATE - I repeated even louder. Then the place came back to life with a roar it seemed. It was like those EF Hutton ads of the eighties. Somebody in a crowed noisy place says EF Hutton and everything goes quiet. "When EF Hutton talks, people listen".
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