Today's Stichomancy for Faith Hill
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaning
from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes,
pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks,
parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam--this is
sport that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment.
A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in comparison.
Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,
perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts.
But then, nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed
when I was at a horse-race. They have been crippled, it is true;
but this is little to the purpose.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: great men, I must state that my only acquaintance with Col.
Clifford was formed while I was _his hired servant_, during the
first winter of my escape from slavery. I owe it him to say,
that in that relation I found him always kind and gentlemanly.
But to the incident. I entered a car at Boston, for New Bedford,
which, with the exception of a single seat was full, and found I
must occupy this, or stand up, during the journey. Having no
mind to do this, I stepped up to the man having the next seat,
and who had a few parcels on the seat, and gently asked leave to
take a seat by his side. My fellow-passenger gave me a look made
up of reproach and indignation, and asked me why I should come to
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: 'Heavens!' he cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care
than ever mother handled her first-born withal, gingerly
transported the explosive to the far end of the apartment:
the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side,
dispiritedly watching him.
'It was entirely harmless,' he sighed. 'They describe it as
burning like tobacco.'
'In the name of fortune,' cried Somerset, 'what have I done
to you, or what have you done to yourself, that you should
persist in this insane behaviour? If not for your own sake,
then for mine, let us depart from this doomed house, where I
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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 Burning Daylight by Jack London: him.
It was held by the thousands of hero-worshipping chechaquos that
Daylight was a man absolutely without fear. But Bettles and Dan
MacDonald and other sourdoughs shook their heads and laughed as
they mentioned women. And they were right. He had always been
afraid of them from the time, himself a lad of seventeen, when
Queen Anne, of Juneau, made open and ridiculous love to him. For
that matter, he never had known women. Born in a mining-camp
where they were rare and mysterious, having no sisters, his
mother dying while he was an infant, he had never been in contact
with them. True, running away from Queen Anne, he had later
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