Today's Stichomancy for James Brown
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: to run up, to blow in his white beard, to drag sweetly on his arm. And he
couldn't meet her, no; he couldn't square up once more and stride off,
jaunty as a young man. He was tired and, although the late sun was still
shining, curiously cold, with a numbed feeling all over. Quite suddenly he
hadn't the energy, he hadn't the heart to stand this gaiety and bright
movement any longer; it confused him. He wanted to stand still, to wave it
away with his stick, to say, "Be off with you!" Suddenly it was a terrible
effort to greet as usual--tipping his wide-awake with his stick--all the
people whom he knew, the friends, acquaintances, shopkeepers, postmen,
drivers. But the gay glance that went with the gesture, the kindly twinkle
that seemed to say, "I'm a match and more for any of you"--that old Mr.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: exertion got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened
team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest part of
the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the
hardest between them and Dawson.
The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the
frost, and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that
the ice held at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to
cover those thirty terrible miles. And terrible they were, for
every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and
man. A dozen times, Perrault, nosing the way broke through the
ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so
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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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: not probably without admiration.
"Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young girl thus
unawares?" she asked him, smiling.
"Especially when they are busy with their secrets," replied Maximilien
archly.
"Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have yours."
"Then you really were thinking of your secrets?" he went on, laughing.
"No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know."
"But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried the young
man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's hand and drawing it
through his arm.
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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 Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with
all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should
destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed
up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a
righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can
set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and
hell, saying, "If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe,
has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine," as it is
written, "My beloved is mine, and I am His" (Cant. ii. 16). This
is what Paul says: "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ," victory over sin and death, as he
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