Today's Stichomancy for B. F. Skinner

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Collection of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter:

not a rabbit.

They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!

WHEN Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his Cousin Flopsy. They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.

I do not remember the separate names of their children;

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac:

not a desert; it is monotonous, but it does not weary; it has only three elements, and yet it is varied."

"Women alone know how to render such impressions," I said. "You would be the despair of a poet, dear soul that I divine so well!"

"The extreme heat of mid-day casts into those three expressions of the infinite an all-powerful color," said Pauline, smiling. "I can here conceive the poesy and the passion of the East."

"And I can perceive its despair."

"Yes," she said, "this dune is a cloister,--a sublime cloister."

We now heard the hurried steps of our guide; he had put on his Sunday clothes. We addressed a few ordinary words to him; he seemed to think

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

three-sided pyramidal base of any one cell at the same time, but only the one rhombic plate which stands on the extreme growing margin, or the two plates, as the case may be; and they never complete the upper edges of the rhombic plates, until the hexagonal walls are commenced. Some of these statements differ from those made by the justly celebrated elder Huber, but I am convinced of their accuracy; and if I had space, I could show that they are conformable with my theory.

Huber's statement that the very first cell is excavated out of a little parallel-sided wall of wax, is not, as far as I have seen, strictly correct; the first commencement having always been a little hood of wax; but I will not here enter on these details. We see how important a part

On the Origin of Species

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp:

the same willing and enchanted ear to the eloquence of flattery as she did on the occasion of the first. What can the exhortations of the strong-minded sister, who has never had these experiences, do for such a woman? It is useless to tell her she is man's victim, that she is his plaything, that she is cheated, down-trodden, kept under, laughed at, shabbily treated in every way--that is not a true statement of the case. She is simply the victim of her own vanity, and against that, against the belief in her own fascinations, against the very <169> part of herself that gives all the colour to her life, who shall expect a woman to take up arms?"

Elizabeth and her German Garden