Today's Stichomancy for Moby

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac:

business is pressing----"

"No, stay," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A magistrate, monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----"

Camusot bowed apologetically.

"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life. A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy's

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa:

foolish with anger. "Such spindle legs cannot stand to fight by daylight!" shouted the brave ones who were terror-struck the night before by the name "Iya."

Warriors with long knives rushed forth and slew the camp-eater.

Lo! there rose out of the giant a whole Indian tribe: their camp ground, their teepees in a large circle, and the people laughing and dancing.

"We are glad to be free!" said these strange people.

Thus Iya was killed; and no more are the camp grounds in danger of being swallowed up in a single night time.

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

of the Eleatic philosophy. But would Plato have been likely to place this in the mouth of the great Parmenides himself, who appeared to him, in Homeric language, to be 'venerable and awful,' and to have a 'glorious depth of mind'? (Theaet.). It may be admitted that he has ascribed to an Eleatic stranger in the Sophist opinions which went beyond the doctrines of the Eleatics. But the Eleatic stranger expressly criticises the doctrines in which he had been brought up; he admits that he is going to 'lay hands on his father Parmenides.' Nothing of this kind is said of Zeno and Parmenides. How then, without a word of explanation, could Plato assign to them the refutation of their own tenets?

The conclusion at which we must arrive is that the Parmenides is not a

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 Call of the Wild by Jack London:

hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs.