Today's Stichomancy for Jon Stewart
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: right in ascribing it to the fact of getting arms. At any rate, no
sooner were the Fougeres recruits obtained than, without delaying for
laggards, he took immediate steps to fall back towards Alencon, so as
to be near a loyal neighborhood,--though the growing disaffection
along the route made the success of this measure problematical. This
old officer, who, under instruction of his superiors, kept secret the
disasters of our armies in Italy and Germany and the disturbing news
from La Vendee, was attempting on the morning when this history
begins, to make a forced march on Mayenne, where he was resolved to
execute the law according to his own good pleasure, and fill the half-
empty companies of his own brigade with his Breton conscripts. The
 The Chouans |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding
feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which
appears to them, when they are under the influence of the speaker, more
wonderful than ever. This consciousness of dignity lasts me more than
three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my senses
and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of
the Blest. Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such manner does
the sound of their words keep ringing in my ears.
MENEXENUS: You are always making fun of the rhetoricians, Socrates; this
time, however, I am inclined to think that the speaker who is chosen will
not have much to say, for he has been called upon to speak at a moment's
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: The princess is one of those impenetrable women; she can make herself
what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or
reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came
to Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of being a gentle,
simple woman, to whom life was known only through its deceptions: a
woman full of soul, and calumniated, but resigned,--in short, a
wounded angel.
She arrived early, so as to pose on a sofa near the fire beside Madame
d'Espard, as she wished to be first seen: that is, in one of those
attitudes in which science is concealed beneath an exquisite
naturalness; a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: many times more powerful than recollection is recognition, perhaps because
it is more assisted by association. We have known and forgotten, and after
a long interval the thing which we have seen once is seen again by us, but
with a different feeling, and comes back to us, not as new knowledge, but
as a thing to which we ourselves impart a notion already present to us; in
Plato's words, we set the stamp upon the wax. Every one is aware of the
difference between the first and second sight of a place, between a scene
clothed with associations or bare and divested of them. We say to
ourselves on revisiting a spot after a long interval: How many things have
happened since I last saw this! There is probably no impression ever
received by us of which we can venture to say that the vestiges are
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