Today's Stichomancy for David Beckham

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

ruler; and our enquiry is not concerned with him who is not a ruler.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Thus a very fair distinction has been attained between the man who gives his own commands, and him who gives another's. And now let us see if the supreme power allows of any further division.

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: I think that it does; and please to assist me in making the division.

YOUNG SOCRATES: At what point?

STRANGER: May not all rulers be supposed to command for the sake of producing something?

Statesman

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

"Not a bit of it!" he said, shoving me up the steps and into the hall. "The old teakettle is just getting `het up' a bit. By the gods and little fishes, just listen to it singing down there!"

The help was gathered in a crowd at the head of the bath-house staircase, where a cloud of steam was coming up, and down below we could hear furious talking, and somebody shouting, "Mike! Mike!" in a voice that was choked with rage and steam.

Doctor Barnes elbowed his way through the crowd to the top of the stairs and I followed.

"There's Minnie!" Amanda King yelled. "She knows all about the place. Minnie, you can shut it off, can't you?"

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley:

'If you die, we die with you; for without you we cannot win the fleece, and home we will not go without it, but fall here fighting to the last man.'

'You need not die,' said Jason. 'Flee home with us across the sea. Show us first how to win the fleece; for you can do it. Why else are you the priestess of the grove? Show us but how to win the fleece, and come with us, and you shall be my queen, and rule over the rich princes of the Minuai, in Iolcos by the sea.'

And all the heroes pressed round, and vowed to her that she should be their queen.

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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

like the prison where she had worn them yester- day, and to be out of place in the open fields. Carl had changed very little. His cheeks were browner and fuller. He looked less like a tired scholar than when he went away a year ago, but no one, even now, would have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrous black eyes, his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the Klondike than on the Divide. There are always dreamers on the frontier.

O Pioneers!