Today's Stichomancy for Edward Norton
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: on the left bank of the Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where
the schools of the University harbored their swarms.
At this signal, Jacqueline's elder lodger began to move about his
room. The sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady listened while he
opened and shut his door, and the old man's heavy step was heard on
the steep stair. The constable's suspicions gave such interest to the
advent of this personage, that the lady was startled as she observed
the strange expression of the two countenances before her. Referring
the terrors of this couple to the youth she was protecting--as was
natural in a lover--the young lady awaited, with some uneasiness, the
event thus heralded by the fears of her so-called master and mistress.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: and yet you will not mind her. Well, remember that it
is not my fault, if we set all the old ladies in Bath
in a bustle. Come along, my dearest Catherine,
for heaven's sake, and stand by me." And off they went,
to regain their former place. John Thorpe, in the meanwhile,
had walked away; and Catherine, ever willing to give
Mr. Tilney an opportunity of repeating the agreeable
request which had already flattered her once, made her
way to Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Thorpe as fast as she could,
in the hope of finding him still with them--a hope which,
when it proved to be fruitless, she felt to have been
Northanger Abbey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: o'clock the night before; whereat Cutter began to swear at him
and said he would have him discharged for incivility.
That afternoon, while I was asleep, Antonia took grandmother with her,
and went over to the Cutters' to pack her trunk. They found the place
locked up, and they had to break the window to get into Antonia's bedroom.
There everything was in shocking disorder. Her clothes had been taken out
of her closet, thrown into the middle of the room, and trampled and torn.
My own garments had been treated so badly that I never saw them again;
grandmother burned them in the Cutters' kitchen range.
While Antonia was packing her trunk and putting her room in order,
to leave it, the front doorbell rang violently. There stood Mrs. Cutter--
My Antonia |
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: butcher's apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour of
Warwickshire in 1693, testifies to it as coming from the old
clerk who showed him over the church, and it is unhesitatingly
accepted as true by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol. I, p. 11, and
Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr. Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in
it, and it is supported by Aubrey, who must have written his
account some time before 1680, when his manuscript was completed.
Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is
not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It has been evolved out
of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking
for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's marvelous
What is Man? |
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