Today's Stichomancy for Barbara Streisand

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

He held her hand pressed very tightly in his, tighter perhaps than conditions required, but she let it lie there as she led him forward, very slowly down a flight of rough stone steps.

Norman of Torn wondered if she were angry with him and then, being new at love, he blundered.

"Joan de Tany," he said.

"Yes, Roger de Conde; what would you?"

"You be silent, and I fear that you be angry with me. Tell me that you forgive what I have done, an it offended you. I have so few friends," he added sadly,

The Outlaw of Torn

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov:

terribly these last few days?" he said, rather carelessly and without looking at me.

"'Where are we fools to drink tea!'"[1] I answered, repeating a pet phrase of one of the cleverest rogues of past times, once celebrated in song by Pushkin.

[1] A popular phrase, equivalent to: "How should I think of doing such a thing?"

"Tell me, does my uniform fit me well? . . . Oh, the cursed Jew! . . . How it cuts me under the armpits! . . . Have you got any

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne:

Holstein, Stormarn, Dittmarsen, and Oldenburg." A powerful lord, in truth, is he whose arms are an eagle with two heads, holding a scepter and a globe, surrounded by the escutcheons of Novgorod, Wladimir, Kiev, Kasan, Astrak- han, and of Siberia, and environed by the collar of the order of St. Andrew, surmounted by a royal crown!

As to Michael Strogoff, his papers were in order, and he was, consequently, free from all police supervision.

At the station of Wladimir the train stopped for several minutes, which appeared sufficient to enable the correspon- dent of the Daily Telegraph to take a twofold view, physical

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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

Across the hawthorn-scented dusks of May.

REALITIES

WE are deceived by the shadow, we see not the substance of things. For the hills are less solid than thought; and deeds are but vapors; and flesh Is a mist thrown off and resumed by the soul, as a world by a god. Back of the transient appearance dwells in inef- fable calm