Today's Stichomancy for Abraham Lincoln

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac:

My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only flower neglected left, Cast down and trodden under foot to die.

At the end, the poet looked up at his Aristarchus. Etienne Lousteau was gazing at the trees in the Pepiniere.

"Well?" asked Lucien.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock:

He then crossed both his hands on his breast under the folds of his holy robes, and stood a few moments as if in inward prayer. A deep silence among the attendant crowd accompanied this action of the friar; interrupted only by the hollow tone of the death-bell, at long and dreary intervals. Suddenly the friar threw off his holy robes, and appeared a forester clothed in green, with a sword in his right hand and a horn in his left. With the sword he cut the bonds of William Gamwell, who instantly snatched a sword from one of the sheriff's men; and with the horn he blew a loud blast, which was answered at once by four bugles from the quarters of the four winds, and from each quarter came

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

immense advance in civilization, such a primitive state of society has continued there to the present day, in all its essentials what it was when as nomads the race forefathers wandered peacefully or otherwise over the plains of Central Asia. The principle helped them to expand; it has simply cramped them ever since. For, instead of dissolving like other antiquated views, it has become, what it was bound to become if it continued to last, crystallized into an institution. It had practically reached this condition when it received a theoretical, not to say a theological recognition which gave it mundane immortality. A couple of millenniums ago Confucius consecrated filial duty by making it the basis of the Chinese moral

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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber:

"You all dress so smartly, and I'm such a dowd, I just want to ask you whether you think I ought to get blue, or that new shade of gray for a traveling-suit."

And the shop, hardened to the eccentricities of noonday speakers, made composed and ready answer:

"Oh, get blue; it's always good."

"Thank you," laughed Gladys Orton-Wells, and was off down the hall and away, with never a backward glance at her gasping and outraged mother.

Emma McChesney Buck took Lily Bernstein's soft cheek between thumb and forefinger and pinched it ever so fondly.

Emma McChesney & Co.