Today's Stichomancy for Sarah Silverman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator:

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And you use both the terms, 'wise' and 'foolish,' in reference to something?

ALCIBIADES: I do.

SOCRATES: Would you call a person wise who can give advice, but does not know whether or when it is better to carry out the advice?

ALCIBIADES: Decidedly not.

SOCRATES: Nor again, I suppose, a person who knows the art of war, but does not know whether it is better to go to war or for how long?

ALCIBIADES: No.

SOCRATES: Nor, once more, a person who knows how to kill another or to

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon:

sufficient pitch of hatred, bound together the most important of them in a confederacy.

[1] = 12,187 pounds: 10 shillings.

[2] See Paus. III. ix. 8; Plut. "Ages." xv.

[3] Reading {nomizontes auton to arkhein} with Sauppe; or if, as Breitinbach suggests, {enomizon de oukh outon to arkhesthai}, translate "but thought it was not for them to take the initiative."

But it was clear to the leaders in Thebes that, unless some one struck the first blow, the Lacedaemonians would never be brought to break the truce with their allies. They therefore persuaded the Opuntian

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

to tell. There were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived on horseback a short time before, and was now seated in a corner smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus, and stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco smoke the pedlar had ever smelt.

"Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a country justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last, and

Twice Told Tales

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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

"Beware, for deep is yonder tide!"

A thrill my blood pervaded now,

I look'd and saw a beauteous maid

I asked her name--twas Kate, she said-- "Oh lovely Kate! how kind art thou!

"From death I have been sav'd by thee,

'Tis through thee only that I live;

Little 'twere life alone to give, My joy in life then deign to be!"

And then I told my sorrows o'er,

Her eyes to earth she sweetly threw;