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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: parting, forever. No one could tell among which pile of chattels
I should be flung. Thus early, I got a foretaste of that painful
uncertainty which slavery brings to the ordinary lot of mortals.
Sickness, adversity and death may interfere with the plans and
purposes of all; but the slave has the added danger of changing
homes, changing hands, and of having separations unknown to other
men. Then, too, there was the intensified degradation of the
spectacle. What an assemblage! Men and women, young and old,
married and single; moral and intellectual beings, in open
contempt of their humanity, level at a blow with <137 DIVISION OF
OLD MASTER'S PROPERTY>horses, sheep, horned cattle and swine!
 My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: since my childhood; I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies
and absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month.
Consequently, I often laugh at ideas in which I have faith."
"Come, let us get to something else," said Leon. "We'll go to the
Chamber and settle the cousin's affair."
"This," said Bixiou, imitating Odry in "Les Funambules," "is high
comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you
shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the
Parisian language has but two tones,--Self-interest, Vanity."
As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a rapidly driven
cabriolet a man to whom he made a sign that he had something to say to
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: on the other hand, began to value himself more highly when he felt
himself appreciated by the mother and daughter. He thought himself
much cleverer than he really was when he found his reflections and
sayings accepted and understood by Mademoiselle Natalie--who raised
her head and smiled in response to them--and by the mother, whose
flattery always seemed involuntary. The two women were so kind and
friendly to him, he was so sure of pleasing them, they ruled him so
delightfully by holding the thread of his self-love, that he soon
passed all his time at the hotel Evangelista.
A year after his return to Bordeaux, Comte Paul, without having
declared himself, was so attentive to Natalie that the world
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: to lay hands on me. I spit in his face, called out to the constable,
and bade him to take notice of my usage. 'And pray, Mr.
Constable,' said I, 'ask that villain's name,' pointing to the
man. The constable reproved him decently, told him that he
did not know what he did, for he knew that his master
acknowledged I was not the person that was in his shop; 'and,'
says the constable, 'I am afraid your master is bringing himself,
and me too, into trouble, if this gentlewoman comes to prove
who she is, and where she was, and it appears that she is not
the woman you pretend to.' 'Damn her,' says the fellow again,
with a impudent, hardened face, 'she is the lady, you may depend
 Moll Flanders |
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