Today's Stichomancy for Benito Juarez

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain:

just for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make."

"What mistake has he made?"

"Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant strawberries."

"Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll--"

"Aunt Sally, without knowing it--and of course without intending it--you are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog--and a lantern--"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

fast to the table, Adele!---never let go!" ...

... Up,---up,---up!---what! higher yet? Up to the red sky! Red---black-red ... heated iron when its vermilion dies. So, too, the frightful flood! And noiseless. Noiseless because heavy, clammy,---thick, warm, sickening---blood? Well might the land quake for the weight of such a tide!---Why did Adele speak Spanish? Who prayed for him? ...

---"Alma de Cristo santisima santificame!

"Sangre de Cristo, embriagame!

"O buen Jesus, oye me!" ...

Out of the darkness into--such a light! An azure haze!

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain:

her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it.

"Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat's as highbawn as you is. Now den, go 'long! En jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to-- you has de right, en dat I kin swah."

CHAPTER 10

The Nymph Revealed

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

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 Parmenides by Plato:

like the individual, in so far as the individual is a resemblance of the idea? That which is like, cannot be conceived of as other than the like of like.

Impossible.

And when two things are alike, must they not partake of the same idea?

They must.

And will not that of which the two partake, and which makes them alike, be the idea itself?

Certainly.

Then the idea cannot be like the individual, or the individual like the idea; for if they are alike, some further idea of likeness will always be