Today's Stichomancy for Muhammad Ali

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne:

who was stepping onto the moving staircase.

"I say! you seem to mean me to take up my quarters here altogether!"

"Do be serious and listen, Jack! I want to speak in earnest myself now."

"Well, I'll listen till the ladder moves again, not a minute longer."

"Jack," resumed Harry, "I need not pretend that I do not love Nell; I wish above all things to make her my wife."

"That's all right!"

"But for the present I have scruples of conscience as to asking her to make me a promise which would be irrevocable."

"What can you mean, Harry?"

"I mean just this--that, it being certain Nell has never

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther:

agite &c.' omnem vitam fidelium penitentiam esse voluit. 2. Quod verbum de penitentia sacramentali (id est confessionis et satisfactionis, que sacerdotum ministerio celebratur) non potest intelligi.

3. Non tamen solam intendit interiorem, immo interior nulla est, nisi foris operetur varias carnis mortificationes.

4. Manet itaque pena, donec manet odium sui (id est penitentia vera intus), scilicet usque ad introitum regni celorum.

5. Papa non vult nec potest ullas penas remittere preter eas, quas arbitrio vel suo vel canonum imposuit.

6. Papa non potest remittere ullam culpam nisi declarando, et

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac:

tie slipped through a diamond ring, while the lawyer never dressed in anything but black--coat, trousers, and waistcoat alike, and those often shabby.

These four men were the first to go into ecstasies over Dinah's cultivation, good taste, and refinement, and pronounced her a woman of most superior mind. Then the women said to each other, "Madame de la Baudraye must laugh at us behind our back."

This view, which was more or less correct, kept them from visiting at La Baudraye. Dinah, attainted and convicted of pedantry, because she spoke grammatically, was nicknamed the Sappho of Saint-Satur. At last everybody made insolent game of the great qualities of the woman who

The Muse of the Department

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 Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov:

achievement; because I have written a work which in three years will be thrown aside and forgotten, I am praised up to the skies; but because I cannot speak of fallen women as unconcernedly as of these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am called mad, I am pitied!"

Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two days before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank into a chair.

His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with the air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories