Today's Stichomancy for Galileo Galilei

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

feeling, but it reassured the girl. "A woman, of course?"

"Of course. And not young."

"'Not young,'" wrote Peter. "Fat?"

Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head.

"Not too stout. And agreeable. That's most important."

"'Agreeable,'" wrote Peter. "Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in the strict sense of the word, was she?"

"She was interesting, and--and human."

"'Human!'" wrote Peter. "Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?"

The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil:

Keep pace together. And time it is that oft Unfreighted wheels be drawn along the ground Behind them, as to dint the surface-dust; Then let the beechen axle strain and creak 'Neath some stout burden, whilst a brazen pole Drags on the wheels made fast thereto. Meanwhile For their unbroken youth not grass alone, Nor meagre willow-leaves and marish-sedge, But corn-ears with thy hand pluck from the crops. Nor shall the brood-kine, as of yore, for thee Brim high the snowy milking-pail, but spend

Georgics

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne:

Ages seem no more than days! I am passed, against my will, in retrograde order, through the long series of terrestrial changes. Plants disappear; granite rocks soften; intense heat converts solid bodies into thick fluids; the waters again cover the face of the earth; they boil, they rise in whirling eddies of steam; white and ghastly mists wrap round the shifting forms of the earth, which by imperceptible degrees dissolves into a gaseous mass, glowing fiery red and white, as large and as shining as the sun.

And I myself am floating with wild caprice in the midst of this nebulous mass of fourteen hundred thousand times the volume of the earth into which it will one day be condensed, and carried forward

Journey to the Center of the Earth

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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

--oh, yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But the mere fact that she was Sha- bata's wife, for Alexandra, settled everything. That she was beautiful, impulsive, barely two years older than Emil, these facts had had no weight with Alexandra. Emil was a good boy, and only bad boys ran after married women. Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was, after all, Marie; not merely a "married woman." Sometimes, when Alex-

O Pioneers!