Today's Stichomancy for Dr. Phil
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: When another of the generals, who thought he had performed considerable
service for the Athenians, boastingly compared his actions with those of
Themistocles, he told him that once upon a time the Day after the
Festival found fault with the Festival: "On you there is nothing but
hurry and trouble and preparation, but, when I come, everybody sits down
quietly and enjoys himself;" which the Festival admitted was true, but
"if I had not come first, you would not have come at all." "Even so,"
he said, "if Themistocles had not come before, where had you been now?"
Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and, by his mother's means,
his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power
of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: He stopped abruptly. I became aware of a change in the rhythm
of the train. The brakes lifted their voices and the carriage
jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became
clamorous. I saw through the steamy window huge electric lights
glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary
empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box, hoisting its
constellation of green and red into the murky London twilight marched
after them. I looked again at his drawn features.
"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment--
no fear, no pain--but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me,
felt the sword drive home into my body. It didn't hurt, you know.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: falseness of her position in the midst of a court noted for its
gallantry contributed much, no doubt, to draw a veil of melancholy
over a face where the charms and the vivacity of love must have shone
in earlier days. Obliged to repress the naive impulses and emotions of
a woman when she simply feels them instead of reflecting about them,
passion was still virgin in the depths of her heart. Her principal
attraction came, in fact, from this innate youth, which sometimes,
however, played her false, and gave to her ideas an innocent
expression of desire. Her manner and appearance commanded respect, but
there was always in her bearing, in her voice, a sort of looking
forward to some unknown future, as in girlhood. The most insensible
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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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: bourgeoisie who were lording it in those days. Besides, when Adam
first made his appearance, in 1833, on the boulevard des Italiens, at
Frascati, and at the Jockey-Club, he was leading the life of a young
man who, having lost his political prospects, was taking his pleasure
in Parisian dissipation. At first he was thought to be a student.
The Polish nationality had at this period fallen as low in French
estimation, thanks to a shameful governmental reaction, as the
republicans had sought to raise it. The singular struggle of the
Movement against Resistance (two words which will be inexplicable
thirty years hence) made sport of what ought to have been truly
respected,--the name of a conquered nation to whom the French had
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