Today's Stichomancy for Steve Martin

The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre table, to be 128 THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter