Today's Stichomancy for Paul Newman
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: threshold, he chopped off his tail. And having thus effectually
dishonoured the poor cur among his neighbours, he tied a string
about his neck, and a piece of paper to the string, directed to his
master, and with these witty West Country verses on it:-
"To my honoured master,--Esq.
"Hail master a cham a' com hoam,
So cut as an ape, and tail have I noan,
For stealing of beef and pork out of the pail,
For thease they'v cut my ears, for th' wother my tail;
Nea measter, and us tell thee more nor that
And's come there again, my brains will be flat."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: Where was the strength of the self-existent soul now? Did he
know that it was a balked, defeated life, that waited for him,
vacant of the triumphs he had planned? "The self-existent soul!
stopped in its growth by chance, this omnipotent deity,--the
chance burning of a mill!" Knowles muttered to himself, looking
at Holmes. With a dim flash of doubt, as he said it, whether
there might not, after all, be a Something,--some deep of calm,
of eternal order, where he and Holmes, these coarse chances,
these wrestling souls, these creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian,
even that namby-pamby Kitts and his picture, might be
unconsciously working out their part. Looking out of the
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: signature of Captain Flint, and the sailing directions of
Billy Bones. But somehow it was never TREASURE ISLAND to me.
I have said the map was the most of the plot. I might almost
say it was the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and
Washington Irving, a copy of Johnson's BUCCANEERS, the name
of the Dead Man's Chest from Kingsley's AT LAST, some
recollections of canoeing on the high seas, and the map
itself, with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the
whole of my materials. It is, perhaps, not often that a map
figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important.
The author must know his countryside, whether real or
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: "Flung me? _No_, but the old man has."
Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl
in the bedroom. "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!"
Then he said aloud, gravely:
"Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which--"
"Oh, shucks, this hasn't got anything to do with dissipation.
He wanted me to challenge that derned Italian savage,
and I wouldn't do it."
"Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative
matter-of-course way, "but the thing that puzzled me was,
why he didn't look to that last night, for one thing,
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