Today's Stichomancy for Sigmund Freud

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain:

repeated that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits, scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving and lamenting. At last he said:

"There it is, shreds and fragments once more--my will. Once more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! Leave my sight! Go--before I spit on you!"

The young man did not tarry. Then the judge turned to Howard:

"You will be my second, old friend?"

"Of course."

"There is pen and paper. Draft the cartel, and lose no time."

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:

plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn't dare to express--a charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. It had come up for him then that she "knew" something and that what she knew was bad--too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher's special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

Jussieu on classification

Kentucky, caves of

Kerguelen-land, flora of

Kidney-bean, acclimatisation of

Kidneys of birds

Kirby on tarsi deficient in beetles

Knight, Andrew, on cause of variation

Kolreuter on the barberry; on sterility of hybrids; on reciprocal crosses; on crossed varieties of nicotiana; on crossing male and hermaphrodite flowers

Land-shells, distribution of, of Madeira, naturalised

On the Origin of Species

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 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

Rom. A right good marke man, and shee's faire I loue Ben. A right faire marke, faire Coze, is soonest hit

Rom. Well in that hit you misse, sheel not be hit With Cupids arrow, she hath Dians wit: And in strong proofe of chastity well arm'd: From loues weake childish Bow, she liues vncharm'd. Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes, Nor bid th' encounter of assailing eyes. Nor open her lap to Sainct-seducing Gold: O she is rich in beautie, onely poore, That when she dies, with beautie dies her store

Romeo and Juliet