Today's Stichomancy for Tupac Shakur

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain:

body could answer to but my West Pointers. That ought to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head.

I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much more admirable was the one which I should display to the Examining Board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity When the Board was assembled, I followed him in;

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare:

Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune, And will awake him from his melancholy. Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles, And waste the time, which looks for other revels. Even in your armours, as you are address'd, Will very well become a soldier's dance. I will not have excuse, with saying this, Loud music is too harsh for ladies' heads Since they love men in arms as well as beds.

[The Knights dance.]

So, this was well ask'd, 'twas so well perform'd.

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

mediation of Signor Pagolo--whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of attention, giving him money, apparel, and horses--the Orsini were reconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power at Sinigalia.[*] Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their partisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations to his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the people now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them all over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be imitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.

[*] Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.

The Prince

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 Iron Puddler by James J. Davis:

days when I piled the pig-iron in the puddling furnace and turned with boyish eagerness to have my father show me how. Six hundred pounds was the weight of pig-iron we used to put into a single hearth. Much wider than the hearth was the fire grate, for we needed a heat that was intense. The flame was made by burning bituminous coal. Vigorously I stoked that fire for thirty minutes with dampers open and the draft roaring while that pig-iron melted down like ice-cream under an electric fan. You have seen a housewife sweating over her oven to get it hot enough to bake a batch of biscuits. Her face gets pink and a drop of sweat dampens her curls. Quite a horrid job she finds it. But I