It's a sensible approach to divining for the beginner.
Similar in principle is coscinomancy, or divining by a sieve held suspended, which gives indications by turning; and the equally common divination by a suspended ring, both of which are found from Europe in the west to China and Japan in the east.
But the same divining imagination which showed him these things also showed him the near time when it would be too late to speak of them, and when not to have spoken would leave him irredeemably in the common herd of hand-tomouth politicians.
Talleyrand, personally impressed when in America with Hamilton's brilliant qualities, declared that he had the power of divining without reasoning, and compared him to Fox and Napoleon because he had " devine l'Europe."
He was a model steward, possessing in the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt with.
