Today's Stichomancy for Muhammad Ali

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare:

Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house (More harder than the stones whereof 'tis rais'd, Which even but now, demanding after you, Denied me to come in) return, and force Their scanted courtesy. Lear. My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

King Lear

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

her palette in the deepest silence. Sitting there, she could hear, distinctly, a sound which had strongly excited her curiosity the evening before, and had whirled her young imagination across vast fields of conjecture. She recognized the firm and regular breathing of a man whom she had just seen asleep. Her curiosity was satisfied beyond her expectations, but at the same time she felt saddled by an immense responsibility. Through the opening in the wall she had seen the Imperial eagle; and upon the flock bed, faintly lighted from above, lay the form of an officer of the Guard. She guessed all. Servin was hiding a proscribed man!

She now trembled lest any of her companions should come near here to

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall:

feel so weary that I long to leave my desk and go to the couch.

'My dear wife and Jane desire their kindest remembrances: I hear them in the next room:... I forget--but not you, my dear Tyndall, for I am

'Ever yours, 'M. Faraday.'

This weariness subsided when he relinquished his work, and I have a cheerful letter from him, written in the autumn of 1865. But towards the close of that year he had an attack of illness, from which he never completely rallied. He continued to attend the Friday Evening Meetings, but the advance of infirmity was apparent

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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad:

breeze she had made for herself expired, as if all at once the air had become too thick to budge; even the slight hiss of the water on her stem died out. The nar- row, long hull, carrying its way without a ripple, seemed to approach the shoal water of the bar by stealth. The plunge of the lead with the mournful, mechanical cry of the lascar came at longer and longer intervals; and the men on her bridge seemed to hold their breath. The Malay at the helm looked fixedly at the compass card, the Captain and the Serang stared at the coast.

End of the Tether