Today's Stichomancy for Niels Bohr

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe:

while the family went all away in the evening out at that window into the court, and left the poor fellows warding and watching for near a fortnight.

Not far from the same place they blew up a watchman with gunpowder, and burned the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he made hideous cries, and nobody would venture to come near to help him, the whole family that were able to stir got out at the windows one storey high, two that were left sick calling out for help. Care was taken to give them nurses to look after them, but the persons fled were never found, till after the plague was abated they returned; but as nothing could be proved, so nothing could be done to them.

It is to be considered, too, that as these were prisons without bars

A Journal of the Plague Year

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

Then Bessie Bell was still more surprised, for there was something white under her veil. Not white all round the face like that Sister Helen Vincula wore, but soft crinkly white just over the lady's soft yellow hair.

Also on the breast of her black dress was a cross, but not white like the cross that Sister Helen Vincula wore. No, this cross was shining very brightly, and it was very golden in the sunlight,--and-- somehow, somehow,--Bessie Bell knew just how that cross felt,--she knew without feeling it. She did not have to feel it as she had felt the dress.

Bessie Bell looked and thought. She thought this lady looked like a

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

these ancestors no private persons, but kings sprung from the loins of kings. Nor is it open to the gainsayer to contend that they were kings indeed but of some chance city. Not so, but even as their family holds highest honour in their fatherland, so too is their city the most glorious in Hellas, whereby they hold, not primacy over the second best, but among leaders they have leadership.

[1] Or, "even to-day, in the proud bead-roll of his ancestry he stands commemorated, in numerical descent from Heracles."

And herein it is open to us to praise both his fatherland and his family. It is notable that never throughout these ages has Lacedaemon, out of envy of the privilege accorded to her kings, tried to dissolve

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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

The art of printing in Europe was discovered in 1438, and the first edition of Marco Polo's travels was printed about 1550-59. Our Punch and Judy was invented by Silvio Fiorillo an Italian dramatist before the year 1600. I have found no reference to the play in Marco Polo's works, nevertheless, one cannot but think that, if not a written, at least an oral, communication of the play may have been carried to Europe by him or some other of the Italian traders or travellers. The two plays are very similar, even to the tones of the man who works the puppets.