Today's Stichomancy for Jonas Salk

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe:

to stem the evil by force. Make a firm stand against the new doctrines, and do not imagine that privileges are secured by sedition, Remain at home; suffer no crowds to assemble in the streets. Sensible people can accomplish much.

(In the meantime the crowd has for the most part dispersed.)

Carpenter. Thanks, your excellency--thanks for your good opinion! We will do what in us lies. (Exit Egmont.) A gracious lord! A true Netherlander! Nothing of the Spaniard about him.

Jetter. If we had only him for a Regent? 'Tis a pleasure to follow him.

Soest. The king won't hear of that. He takes care to appoint his own people to the place.

Egmont

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw:

developed, Wagner augmenting his fifths with a G sharp where Donizetti would have put his fingers in his ears and screamed for G natural. But it is an opera chorus all the same; and along with it we have theatrical grandiosities that recall Meyerbeer and Verdi: pezzi d'insieme for all the principals in a row, vengeful conjurations for trios of them, romantic death song for the tenor: in short, all manner of operatic conventions.

Now it is probable that some of us will have been so talked by the more superstitious Bayreuth pilgrims into regarding Die Gotterdammerung as the mighty climax to a mighty epic, more Wagnerian than all the other three sections put together, as not

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac:

"Come, reassure yourself, my dear madame," he remarked, holding out his hand. The touch of the cold, serpent-like skin made a terrible impression upon the portress. It brought about something like a physical reaction, which checked her emotion; Mme. Fontaine's toad, Astaroth, seemed to her to be less deadly than this poison-sac that wore a sandy wig and spoke in tones like the creaking of a hinge.

"Do not imagine that I am frightening you to no purpose," Fraisier continued. (La Cibot's feeling of repulsion had not escaped him.) "The affairs which made Mme. la Presidente's dreadful reputation are so well known at the law-courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like. The great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was

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 The Faith of Men by Jack London:

"There's a cabin right around the second corner from the Monte Carlo," he told him--"the one with the sody-bottle window. It ain't mine, but I've got charge of it. Rents for ten a day and cheap for the money. You move right in, and I'll see you later. Don't forget the sody-bottle window."

"Tra-la-loo!" he called back a moment later. "I'm goin' up the hill to eat eggs and dream of home."

On his way to the cabin, Rasmunsen recollected he was hungry and bought a small supply of provisions at the N. A. T. & T. store-- also a beefsteak at the butcher shop and dried salmon for the dogs. He found the cabin without difficulty, and left the dogs in the