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 Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: we stopped before a small house, evidently belonging to some
person of the middle class, completely shut up, built on to the
street with a garden in the rear.
"Marchas broke open the lock by means of a big stone, which he
picked up near the garden gate; then he mounted the steps,
smashed in the front door with his feet and shoulders, lighted a
bit of wax candle, which he was never without, and preceded us
into the comfortable apartments of some rich private individual,
guiding us with admirable assurance, just as if he had lived in
this house which he now saw for the first time.
"Two troopers remained outside to take care of our horses; then
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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 Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: was no clear conception that any such distribution was possible.
As one attempts a comprehensive view of those opening years of
the new age, as one measures it against the latent achievement
that later years have demonstrated, one begins to measure the
blindness, the narrowness, the insensate unimaginative
individualism of the pre-atomic time. Under this tremendous dawn
of power and freedom, under a sky ablaze with promise, in the
very presence of science standing like some bountiful goddess
over all the squat darknesses of human life, holding patiently in
her strong arms, until men chose to take them, security, plenty,
the solution of riddles, the key of the bravest adventures, in
The Last War: A World Set Free |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: eyes.
Sharp at the hour the procession was in march, the coffin wrapped
in white and carried by four bearers; mourners behind - not many,
for not many remained in Rotoava, and not many in black, for these
were poor; the men in straw hats, white coats, and blue trousers or
the gorgeous parti-coloured pariu, the Tahitian kilt; the women,
with a few exceptions, brightly habited. Far in the rear came the
widow, painfully carrying the dead man's mat; a creature aged
beyond humanity, to the likeness of some missing link.
The dead man had been a Mormon; but the Mormon clergyman was gone
with the rest to wrangle over boundaries in the adjacent isle, and
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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 The Talisman by Walter Scott: difference betwixt us, saw no other refuge for his daughter's
honour than to place her within the shadow of the cloister. I
returned from a distant expedition, loaded with spoils and
honour, to find my happiness was destroyed for ever! I too
sought the cloister; and Satan, who had marked me for his own,
breathed into my heart a vapour of spiritual pride, which could
only have had its source in his own infernal regions. I had
risen as high in the church as before in the state. I was,
forsooth, the wise, the self-sufficient, the impeccable!--I was
the counsellor of councils--I was the director of prelates. How
should I stumble?--wherefore should I fear temptation? Alas! I
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