Today's Stichomancy for Albert Einstein
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: side. The Italian and Tito talked with such extreme rapidity, and in a
dialect unfamiliar to a man who hardly knew even the Italian of books,
that Rodolphe could neither hear nor guess the drift of this
conversation. But Tito's handsome face, Francesca's familiarity, and
Gina's expression of delight, all aggrieved him. And indeed no lover
can help being ill pleased at finding himself neglected for another,
whoever he may be. Tito tossed a little leather bag to Gina, full of
gold no doubt, and a packet of letters to Francesca, who began to read
them, with a farewell wave of the hand to Tito.
"Get quickly back to Gersau," she said to the boatmen, "I will not let
my poor Emilio pine ten minutes longer than he need."
 Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: growth of the two plants. We can sometimes see the reason why one tree
will not take on another, from differences in their rate of growth, in the
hardness of their wood, in the period of the flow or nature of their sap,
&c.; but in a multitude of cases we can assign no reason whatever. Great
diversity in the size of two plants, one being woody and the other
herbaceous, one being evergreen and the other deciduous, and adaptation to
widely different climates, does not always prevent the two grafting
together. As in hybridisation, so with grafting, the capacity is limited
by systematic affinity, for no one has been able to graft trees together
belonging to quite distinct families; and, on the other hand, closely
allied species, and varieties of the same species, can usually, but not
 On the Origin of Species |
| 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: or round King's Chapel,--yet never, I may boldly say, did a more
comfortable little party assemble in the Province House, from
Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered
more interesting by the presence of a venerable personage, whose
own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe,
and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of
Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but
extinguished, class, whose attachment to royalty, and to the
colonial institutions and customs that were connected with it,
had never yielded to the democratic heresies of after times. The
young queen of Britain has not a more loyal subject in her
 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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: Cross, near London.
From hence in my way to the seaside I came to New Forest, of which
I have said something already with relation to the great extent of
ground which lies waste, and in which there is so great a quantity
of large timber, as I have spoken of already.
This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record, laid
open and waste for a forest and for game by that violent tyrant
William the Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopled the
country, pulled down the houses, and, which was worse, the churches
of several parishes or towns, and of abundance of villages, turning
the poor people out of their habitations and possessions, and
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