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 A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov:

"The scoundrel!" said the second Cossack. "No sooner does he drink his fill of chikhir[1] than off he goes and cuts up anything that comes in his way. Let us be after him, Eremeich, we must tie him up or else" . . .

[1] A Caucasian wine.

They took themselves off, and I continued my way with greater caution, and at length arrived at my lodgings without mishap.

I was living with a certain old Cossack under- officer whom I loved, not only on account of his

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

unbinds me," and to Bertha Kircher: "Quick! Cut these bonds. The apes will take care of the blacks."

Turning from her advance the girl ran to his side. She had no knife and the bonds were tied tightly but she worked quick- ly and coolly and as Zu-tag and his apes closed with the war- riors, she succeeded in loosening Tarzan's bonds sufficiently to permit him to extricate his own hands so that in another min- ute he had freed himself.

"Now unbind the Englishman," he cried, and, leaping for- ward, ran to join Zu-tag and his fellows in their battle against the blacks. Numabo and his warriors, realizing now the rela-

Tarzan the Untamed

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela:

woman, panting.

They remembered that one year ago they had captured Zacatecas. They grew sadder still.

Juchipila, like the other towns they had passed through on their way from Tepic, by way of Jalisco, Aguasca- lientes and Zacatecas, was in ruins. The black trail of the incendiaries showed in the roofless houses, in the burnt arcades. Almost all the houses were closed, yet, here and there, those still open offered, in ironic contrast, portals gaunt and bare as the white skeletons of horses scattered over the roads. The terrible pangs of hunger

The Underdogs

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 Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey:

find her if she is not as the grain of drifting sand. But is the White Prophet wise in his years? Let the Flower of the Desert take root in the soil of her forefathers."

"Eschtah's wisdom is great, but he thinks only of Indian blood. Mescal is half white, and her ways have been the ways of the white man. Nor does Eschtah think of the white man's love."

"The desert has called. Where is the White Prophet's vision? White blood and red blood will not mix. The Indian's blood pales in the white man's stream; or it burns red for the sun and the waste and the wild. Eschtah's forefathers, sleeping here in the silence, have called the Desert Flower."

The Heritage of the Desert