Today's Stichomancy for Benjamin Franklin
The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: 1852 he had occasion to see both men and masters at their worst, in
the excitement of a strike; and very foolishly (after their custom)
both would seem to have behaved. Beginning with a fair show of
justice on either side, the masters stultified their cause by
obstinate impolicy, and the men disgraced their order by acts of
outrage. 'On Wednesday last,' writes Fleeming, 'about three
thousand banded round Fairbairn's door at 6 o'clock: men, women,
and children, factory boys and girls, the lowest of the low in a
very low place. Orders came that no one was to leave the works;
but the men inside (Knobsticks, as they are called) were precious
hungry and thought they would venture. Two of my companions and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: buoy danced with them. The shadows of the clouds ran races over
the bright blue bay, and yet never caught each other up; and the
breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and jumped up
over the rocks, to see what the green fields inside were like, and
tumbled down and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded
it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up again. And the terns
hovered over Tom like huge white dragon-flies with black heads, and
the gulls laughed like girls at play, and the sea-pies, with their
red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore, and
whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked and looked, and listened;
and he would have been very happy, if he could only have seen the
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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 Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: wooer. From the very first he seemed DIFFICILE, but he had been
keeping to his own room ever since his struggle with Mimi Watford.
On that occasion Lady Arabella had shown him in an unmistakable way
what her feelings were; indeed, she had made it known to him, in a
more overt way than pride should allow, that she wished to help and
support him. The moment when she had gone across the room to stand
beside him in his mesmeric struggle, had been the very limit of her
voluntary action. It was quite bitter enough, she felt, that he did
not come to her, but now that she had made that advance, she felt
that any withdrawal on his part would, to a woman of her class, be
nothing less than a flaming insult. Had she not classed herself
 Lair of the White Worm |
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: deliver themselves. As for women that do not think they own
safety worth their though, that, impatient of their perfect state,
resolve, as they call it, to take the first good Christian that
comes, that run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle,
I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies
that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people,
and to me they look like people that venture their whole estates
in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize.
No man of common-sense will value a woman the less for not
giving up herself at the first attack, or for accepting his proposal
without inquiring into his person or character; on the contrary,
 Moll Flanders |
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