Today's Stichomancy for Steve Martin
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: has not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When
calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended
and took root in the Eight Islands, a QUID PRO QUO was to be looked
for. To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its
adornments, God had sent at last an opportunity. I know I am
touching here upon a nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others
of your colleagues look back on the inertia of your Church, and the
intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to
be called remorse. I am sure it is so with yourself; I am
persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, not
essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in that
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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 Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: painted thereon; and when to the familiar series of
"Henchard," "Everdene," "Shiner," "Darton," and so on, was
added one inscribed "Farfrae," in staring new letters,
Henchard was stung into bitterness; like Bellerophon, he
wandered away from the crowd, cankered in soul.
From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in
Henchard's house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-
Jane's mother inadvertently alluded to her favourite's
movements, the girl would implore her by a look to be
silent; and her husband would say, "What--are you, too, my
enemy?"
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Upon her lips . . .
Until he knew he loved this quiet lady;
And night by night a dread
Leered at his dreams, for he knew that Hiroshigi
Was many centuries dead,--
And the lady, too, was dead, and all who knew her . .
Dead, and long turned to dust . . .
The thin moon waxed and waned, and left him paler,
The peach leaves flew in a gust,
And he would surely have died; but there one day
A wise man, white with age,
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: vested wrongs, vested superstitions, and the whole vis inertiae of
the world, the flesh, and the devil. They were guilty indeed, in
this case, not merely of ignorance of human nature, but of
forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the excellent New
Poor-law was greeted with the curses of those very farmers and
squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to
the very letter, but are often too ready to resist any improvement
or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poor-law
Board from which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural
Science, though of sixty years' steady growth, has not yet
penetrated into a third of the farms of England; and that hundreds
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