Today's Stichomancy for B. F. Skinner

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

also. I need no Word from thee, for well I know----"

"Be it so, then," said Kaa. "I will give no Word; but what is in thy stomach to do when the dhole come?"

"They must swim the Waingunga. I thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the Pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting, we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats."

"The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot," said Kaa. "There will be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones."

"Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my

The Second Jungle Book

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome:

question on the agenda list of the political day, it actually constitutes a party." And Trotsky again, on the same occasion, illustrated the relative positions of the Soviet Constitution and the Communist Party when he said, "And today, now that we have received an offer of peace from the Polish Government, who decides the question? Whither are the workers to turn? We have our Council of People's Commissaries, of course, but that, too, must be under a certain control. Whose control? The control of the working class as a formless chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of the party is called together to discuss and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister:

dollars more at present prices. New York Central and Hudson River 3 1-2's. Or here are West Shore 4's at 113 5-8. But you see it scales down to pretty much the same thing. The sort of bond that a trustee will call safe does not bring the owner more than about three and one-half per cent.'"

"'Why, there are some six per cent bonds!' I said; and I pointed them out to him."

"'Selling at 137 7-8, you see,' said Mr. Beverly. 'Deducting the tax, there you are scaled down again.' He pencilled some swift calculations. 'There,' said he. And I nearly understood them. 'Now I'm not here to stop your buying that sort of petticoat and canary-bird wafer,' continued Mr.

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 Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair:

Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We shall try the weight of their jewelled sledges--books, sermons, newspaper-interviews, after-dinner speeches--wherewith they pound their golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands and feet of the proletarian Christ.

Here, for example, is Rev. F. G. Peabody, Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University. Prof. Peabody has written several books on the social teachings of Jesus; he quotes the most rabid of the carpenter's denunciations of the rich, and says:

Is it possible that so obvious and so limited a message as this, a teaching so slightly distinguished from the curbstone rhetoric