Today's Stichomancy for Tupac Shakur

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov:

"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."

"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"

"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly. "Will you get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her well."

Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by little to be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories

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

endurance of cold and heat and toil and pain. He had noticed the undue licence which one of his acquaintances allowed himself in all such matters.[2] Accordingly he thus addressed him:

[1] This sentence in the Greek concludes Bk. I. There is something wrong or very awkward in the text here.

[2] Cf. Grote, "Plato," III. xxxviii. p. 530.

Tell me, Aristippus (Socrates said), supposing you had two children entrusted to you to educate, one of them must be brought up with an aptitude for government, and the other without the faintest propensity to rule--how would you educate them? What do you say? Shall we begin our inquiry from the beginning, as it were, with the bare elements of

The Memorabilia

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson:

to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by anything from me must be indeed trifling when compared with the pain with which they read your letter. It is not the hangman, but the criminal, that brings dishonour on the house.

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 Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

and no one would know it was mine, although I would tell the Familey later on, when to late to return it. He said little, but looked at me and kept on smoking, and was not as excited as I had expected, although interested.

But in the midst of my Narative he rose quickly and observed:

"Bab, I'm poizoned!"

I then perceived that he was pale and hagard. I rose to my feet, and thinking it might be the cigar, I asked him if he would care for a peice of chocolate cake to take the taste away. But to my greif he refused very snappishly and without a Farewell slamed out of the house, leaving his hat and so forth in the hall.