Today's Stichomancy for Jerry Lewis
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: that way before the stink of 'em drove you back. It was the
Purple Death 'ad killed 'em every one. The cats and dogs and
'ens and vermin caught it. Everything and every one 'ad it.
Jest a few of us 'appened to live. I pulled through, and your
aunt, though it made 'er lose 'er 'air. Why, you find the
skeletons in the 'ouses now. This way we been into all the
'ouses and took what we wanted and buried moce of the people, but
up that way, Norwood way, there's 'ouses with the glass in the
windows still, and the furniture not touched--all dusty and
falling to pieces--and the bones of the people lying, some in
bed, some about the 'ouse, jest as the Purple Death left 'em
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: opera; and it not infrequently thus happened that, to show he
didn't wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, he was
the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the
month. It even happened that, seeing her home at such times, he
occasionally went in with her to finish, as he called it, the
evening, and, the better to make his point, sat down to the frugal
but always careful little supper that awaited his pleasure. His
point was made, he thought, by his not eternally insisting with her
on himself; made for instance, at such hours, when it befell that,
her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over
passages of the opera together. It chanced to be on one of these
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Haue with our needles, created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key:
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and mindes
Had beene incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet a vnion in partition,
Two louely berries molded on one stem,
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart,
Two of the first life coats in Heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
 A Midsummer Night's Dream |
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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: France employs about six thousand judges; no generation has six
thousand great men at her command, much less can she find them in the
legal profession. Popinot, in the midst of the civilization of Paris,
was just a very clever cadi, who, by the character of his mind, and by
dint of rubbing the letter of the law into the essence of facts, had
learned to see the error of spontaneous and violent decisions. By the
help of his judicial second-sight he could pierce the double casing of
lies in which advocates hide the heart of a trial. He was a judge, as
the great Desplein was a surgeon; he probed men's consciences as the
anatomist probed their bodies. His life and habits had led him to an
exact appreciation of their most secret thoughts by a thorough study
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