Today's Stichomancy for Steve Jobs

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton:

"Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don't she?" her hostess continued.

Ann Eliza's cheeks grew hot. "Ain't you a teeny bit lonesome away out here sometimes?" she asked. "I should think you'd be scared nights, all alone with your daughter."

"Oh, no, I ain't," said Mrs. Hochmuller. "You see I take in washing--dat's my business--and it's a lot cheaper doing it out here dan in de city: where'd I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den it's safer for Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets."

"Oh," said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct

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

most perfect urbanity. I asked him to see whether, as he had made a mistake and sent them to the wrong address, he could not take back his cross and his pension,--though to be sure, as I told him, I deserved them for other things.

"The government," he replied, "is not in the habit of making mistakes; what it does is always properly done, and it never annuls an ordinance signed by the hand of his Majesty. Your great labors have deserved the two favors the King has granted you; it is a long-standing debt, which I am happy to pay off in his name."

"But Felix?" I said; "because after all for a young man it is not such a bad discovery."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells:

intelligent and sympathetic and really anxious to reconcile Richmond's views with those of the big business men on the Committee. He might do. . . . Or perhaps I might be able to persuade two or three people to write down their impressions of him. A sort of memorial volume. . . . But he was shy of friends. There was no man he talked to very intimately about his ideas unless it was to you . . . I wish I had the writer's gift, doctor."

Section 7

It was on the second afternoon that Lady Hardy summoned Dr. Martineau by telephone. "Something rather disagreeable," she

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 Lesser Hippias by Plato:

particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.

These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3) great excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of the Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of