Today's Stichomancy for Colin Powell

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith:

How narrow the path is. I'm tempted to ask Your permission to finish (no difficult task!) The cigar you have given me (really a prize!) In your company.

ALFRED.

Charm'd, Sir, to find your road lies In the way of my own inclinations! Indeed The dream of your nation I find in this weed. In the distant Savannahs a talisman grows That makes all men brothers that use it . . . who knows? That blaze which erewhile from the Boulevart out-broke,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

Brutus kill'd me

Ham. It was a bruite part of him, to kill so Capitall a Calfe there. Be the Players ready? Rosin. I my Lord, they stay vpon your patience

Qu. Come hither my good Hamlet, sit by me

Ha. No good Mother, here's Mettle more attractiue

Pol. Oh ho, do you marke that? Ham. Ladie, shall I lye in your Lap? Ophe. No my Lord

Ham. I meane, my Head vpon your Lap? Ophe. I my Lord

Hamlet

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

servant like Adam: all these are the characteristics of Eton and Harrow, not of the public elementary or private adventure school. They prove, as everything we know about Shakespear suggests, that he thought of the Shakespears and Ardens as families of consequence, and regarded himself as a gentleman under a cloud through his father's ill luck in business, and never for a moment as a man of the people. This is at once the explanation of and excuse for his snobbery. He was not a parvenu trying to cover his humble origin with a purchased coat of arms: he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up.

This Side Idolatry

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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac:

Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. "I am very sorry for you, for you are a good little woman."

"Ah, monsieur," said the poor lady, "who could have believed that when he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his ruin?"

"Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most anxious to take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all see why."

In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no obligation to des Grassins.

Eugenie Grandet