Today's Stichomancy for Franz Kafka

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth:

He will be provided with a cheap uniform, which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London, and it will go hardly with us, and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener, if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all the expenses of the concern, and leave something over for the maintenance of the hopelessly incompetent, and those who, to put it roughly, are not worth their keep.

Every person in the Farm Colony will be taught the elementary lesson of obedience, and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry, or some other method of earning his bread. The Agricultural Section will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and

In Darkest England and The Way Out

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

HERODE. Non, non.

HERODIAS. C'est bien dit, ma fille.

HERODE. Non, non, Salome. Vous ne me demandez pas cela. N'ecoutez pas votre mere. Elle vous donne toujours de mauvais conseils. Il ne faut pas l'ecouter.

SALOME. Je n'ecoute pas ma mere. C'est pour mon propre plaisir que je demande la tete d'Iokanaan dans un bassin d'argent. Vous avez jure, Herode. N'oubliez pas que vous avez jure.

HERODE. Je le sais. J'ai jure par mes dieux. Je le sais bien. Mais je vous supplie, Salome, de me demander autre chose. Demandez- moi la moitie de mon royaume, et je vous la donnerai. Mais ne me

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard:

perceive, however, that they watched each other in spite of their lively conversation. To me he was deferential, but went over the ground of our acquaintance as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. But for my life-long habit of never calling in question the behavior of those I came in contact with, and of never expecting any thing different from that I received, I might have wondered over his visit. Every person's individuality was sacred to me, from the fact, perhaps, that my own individuality had never been respected by any person with whom I had any relation--not even by my own mother.

After Mr. Uxbridge went, I asked Aunt Eliza if she thought he

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 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini:

point. On the other hand, if boiling water be dropped on the superheated disk its temperature will immediately be REDUCED to six degrees below the boiling point; thus the hot metal really cools the water.

By taking advantage of the fact that different liquids assume a spheroidal form at widely different temperatures, one may obtain some startling results. For example, liquid sulphurous acid is so volatile as to have a temperature of only 13 degrees F. when in that state,

Miracle Mongers and Their Methods