Today's Stichomancy for James Legge
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: as we called him, had won the Eastern League
Pennant for me that season, and Morrisey, the
Chicago magnate, had bought him. Milly, my
affianced, was with me, looking as happy as she
was pretty, and she was chaperoned by her
mother, Mrs. Nelson.
With me, also, were two veterans of my team,
McCall and Spears, who lived in Chicago, and
who would have traveled a few miles to see the
Rube pitch. And the other member of my party
was Mrs. Hurtle, the Rube's wife, as saucy and
 The Redheaded Outfield |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: and steel and precious stones from the granite domes,
peaks, minarets, and palisades of the High Sierras.
Solid as they were in reality, in the crispness of this
mountain air, under the tangible blue of this mountain
sky, they seemed to poise light as so many balloons.
Some of them rose sheer, with hardly a fissure; some
had flung across their shoulders long trailing pine
draperies, fine as fur; others matched mantles of the
whitest white against the bluest blue of the sky.
Towards the lower country were more pines rising in
ridges, like the fur of an animal that has been alarmed.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: we know it, we shall take it with expression. As much expression as you
can put into it. Think of the words, girls. Use your imaginations.
'Fast! Ah, too Fast,'" cried Miss Meadows. "That ought to break out--a
loud, strong forte--a lament. And then in the second line, 'Winter Drear,'
make that 'Drear' sound as if a cold wind were blowing through it. 'Dre-
ear!'" said she so awfully that Mary Beazley, on the music stool, wriggled
her spine. "The third line should be one crescendo. 'Fleetly! Ah,
Fleetly Music's Gay Measure.' Breaking on the first word of the last line,
Passes.' And then on the word, 'Away,' you must begin to die...to
fade...until 'The Listening Ear' is nothing more than a faint whisper...You
can slow down as much as you like almost on the last line. Now, please."
|
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: it seemed to me that Cambridge was the fittest place in which they could
see the light, because to Cambridge I mainly owe what little right
method or sound thought may be found in them, or indeed, in anything
which I have ever written. In the heyday of youthful greediness and
ambition, when the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the
universe, must needs know everything, or rather know about everything,
at once and on the spot, too many are apt, as I have been in past years,
to complain of Cambridge studies as too dry and narrow: but as time
teaches the student, year by year, what is really required for an
understanding of the objects with which he meets, he begins to find that
his University, in as far as he has really received her teaching into
|
|
|