Today's Stichomancy for Niels Bohr

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon:

I claim to speak at once more exactly and more reverentially than they do who ascribe the power of the gods to birds. And that I am not lying against the Godhead I have this as a proof: although I have reported to numbers of friends the counsels of heaven, I have never at any time been shown to be a deceiver or deceived."

[20] Cf. "Mem." I. i. 2.

[21] Cf. Plat. "Apol." 19.

[22] Cf. "Anab." III. ii. 11; Aristoph. "Birds," 720.

[23] Delphi.

[24] Or, "the objects that meet us." See Prof. Jebb ad Theophr. "Ch." xxviii. 5.

The Apology

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale:

Sure and elated.

That was the gift you gave me. . . .

The streets grew still more tangled, And led at last to water black and glossy, Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off. There on a shabby building was a sign "The India Wharf " . . . and we turned back.

I always felt we could have taken ship And crossed the bright green seas To dreaming cities set on sacred streams And palaces

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac:

ignorant of what the process of marriage is in France; I am a Spaniard and a Creole. I did not know that in order to marry my daughter it was necessary to reckon up the days which God may still grant me; that my child would suffer because I live; that I do harm by living, and by having lived! When my husband married me I had nothing but my name and my person. My name alone was a fortune to him, which dwarfed his own. What wealth can equal that of a great name? My dowry was beauty, virtue, happiness, birth, education. Can money give those treasures? If Natalie's father could overhear this conversation, his generous soul would be wounded forever, and his happiness in paradise destroyed. I dissipated, foolishly, perhaps, a few of his millions

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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard:

of the Aztec was gone, and she would not be comforted for many days.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA IS AVENGED

For many years after the death of Guatemoc I lived with Otomie at peace in the City of Pines. Our country was poor and rugged, and though we defied the Spaniards and paid them no tribute, now that Cortes had gone back to Spain, they had no heart to attempt our conquest. Save some few tribes that lived in difficult places like ourselves, all Anahuac was in their power, and there was little to gain except hard blows in the bringing of a remnant of the people

Montezuma's Daughter