Today's Stichomancy for Bill O'Reilly
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: her tears, her parted lips, her very breath, he was uneasily
conscious of something in her he could not understand. Doubtless
she had the wisdom of perfect beings. He sighed. He felt
something invisible that stood between them, something that would
let him approach her so far, but no farther. No desire, no
longing, no effort of will or length of life could destroy this
vague feeling of their difference. With awe but also with great
pride he concluded that it was her own incomparable perfection.
She was his, and yet she was like a woman from another world.
His! His! He exulted in the glorious thought; nevertheless her
tears pained him.
 Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville to-day, was
called, and perhaps is still called, "the Chalet." Originally it was a
porter's lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of
the villa to which it belonged,--a mansion with park, gardens,
aviaries, hot-houses, and lawns--took a fancy to put the little
dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he
reconstructed it on the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided
this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with
flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along
which he planted a concealing hedge. Behind the cottage (called, in
spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the Chalet) were the orchards
 Modeste Mignon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: accustomed to civilised warfare. So that, were I undertaking to
discipline such a breechless mob, it were impossible for me to be
understood; and if I were understood, judge ye, my lord, what
chance I had of being obeyed among a band of half salvages, who
are accustomed to pay to their own lairds and chiefs, allenarly,
that respect and obedience whilk ought to be paid to
commissionate officers. If I were teaching them to form battalia
by extracting the square root, that is, by forming your square
battalion of equal number of men of rank and file, corresponding
to the square root of the full number present, what return could
I expect for communicating this golden secret of military tactic,
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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 Time Machine by H. G. Wells: round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a
reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw
the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you
imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs
moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long
antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its
stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic
front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly
bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there.
I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering
and feeling as it moved.
 The Time Machine |
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