Today's Stichomancy for Werner Heisenberg

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

My childhood's darling flower. Smile on the little daisy still, The buttercup's bright goblet fill With all thy former power.

For ever hang thy dreamy spell Round mountain star and heather bell, And do not pass away From sparkling frost, or wreathed snow, And whisper when the wild winds blow, Or rippling waters play.

Is childhood, then, so all divine?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott:

and with a light single-handed sword instead of his ponderous brand, Hobbie Noble, attacked by superior numbers, was made prisoner and executed.

With this weapon, and by means of his own strength and address, the Laird's Jock maintained the reputation of the best swordsman on the Border side, and defeated or slew many who ventured to dispute with him the formidable title.

But years pass on with the strong and the brave as with the feeble and the timid. In process of time the Laird's Jock grew incapable of wielding his weapons, and finally of all active exertion, even of the most ordinary kind. The disabled champion

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius:

And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds And friendly gales?- in vain, since, often up-caught In fury-cyclones, is he borne along, For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom. Ah, so irrevocably some hidden power Betramples forevermore affairs of men, And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire The lictors' glorious rods and axes dire, Having them in derision! Again, when earth From end to end is rocking under foot, And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten

Of The Nature of Things

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 Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair:

got any idea of it, she would have been horrified and indignant-- she might even have broken off the engagement.

And then, too, there was Henriette's father, a personage of great dignity and importance. M. Loches was a deputy of the French Parliament, from a district in the provinces. He was a man of upright life, and a man who made a great deal of that upright life--keeping it on a pedestal where everyone might observe it. It was impossible to imagine M. Loches in an undignified or compromising situation--such as the younger man found himself facing in the matter of Lizette.

The more he thought about it the more nervous and anxious George