Today's Stichomancy for Bill Gates
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: Cowardly came upon our weakened backs,
And murthered all with fatal massacre.
Amongst the which old Debon, martial knight,
With many wounds was brought unto the death,
And Albanact, oppressed with multitude,
Whilst valiantly he felled his enemies,
Yielded his life and honour to the dust.
He being dead, the soldiers fled amain,
And I alone escaped them by flight,
To bring you tidings of these accidents.
LOCRINE.
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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 Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: was masterly. McCloskey fanned, Hutchinson
fouled out, Brewster got a short safe fly just
out of reach, and Hoffner hit to second, forcing
Brewster.
With Dugan up for the Quakers in the third
inning, Cogswell and Bannister, from the coaching
lines, began to talk to the Rube. My ears,
keen from long practice, caught some of the
remarks in spite of the noisy bleachers.
``Say, busher, you 've lasted longer'n we
expected, but you don't know it!''
The Redheaded Outfield |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: elegance and virtue; in the other, out of a sense of his
infirmities, he is filled with confidence because a year has
come and gone, and he has still preserved some rags of honour.
In the first, he expects an angel for a wife; in the last, he
knows that she is like himself - erring, thoughtless, and
untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling
radiancy of better things, and adorned with ineffective
qualities. You may safely go to school with hope; but ere you
marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world:
that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent
play-things; that hope and love address themselves to a
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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 On Revenues by Xenophon: Athens.[5]
[5] See "Geog. of Brit. Isles." J. R. and S. A. Green, ch. i. p. 7:
"London, in fact, is placed at what is very nearly the geometrical
centre of those masses of land which make up the earth surface of
the globe, and is thus more than any city of the world the natural
point of convergence for its different lines of navigation," etc.
The natural advantages of Boeotia are similarly set forth by
Ephorus. Cf. Strab. ix. 2, p. 400.
Once more, this land though not literally sea-girt has all the
advantages of an island, being accessible to every wind that blows,
and can invite to its bosom or waft from its shore all products, since
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