Today's Stichomancy for Umberto Eco

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain:

"What are you talking about? Are you in earnest?"

"It is truly as I have said."

"Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was the method? Competitive examination?"

"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this -- these officers be all of noble family, and are born -- what is it you call it? -- chuckleheads."

"There's something wrong, Clarence. "

"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do travel hence with the king -- young nobles both -- and if you but wait where you are you

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:

of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary transactions in which they had been connected, without actually naming her authority, but stating as such as might be relied on.

Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned; but as they were now approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave way to the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in pointing out to her husband all the interesting spots in its environs to think of anything else. Fatigued as she had been by the morning's walk they had no sooner dined than she set off again in quest of her former acquaintance, and the evening was spent in the satisfactions of a intercourse renewed

Pride and Prejudice

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger:

informed that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is infected with some form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of the infected are mentally defective,--morons, imbeciles, or ``border- line'' cases most dangerous to the community at large. At least 25 per cent. of the inmates of our prisons, according to Dr. Fernald, are mentally defective and belong either to the feeble-minded or to the defective-delinquent class. Nearly 50 per cent. of the girls sent to reformatories are mental defectives. To-day, society treats feeble- minded or ``defective delinquent'' men or women as ``criminals,'' sentences them to prison or reformatory for a ``term,'' and then releases them at the expiration of their sentences. They are usually

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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske:

back to David; "Matthew" referring him to the royal line of Judah, while "Luke" more cautiously has recourse to an assumed younger branch. Superposed upon this primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same narratives, the account of the descent of the pneuma at the time of the baptism; and crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the nativity which, though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree in representing the divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three stages of Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the first; and nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the synoptists than the fact that the

The Unseen World and Other Essays