Today's Stichomancy for David Geffen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

great satisfaction, had yielded to their request not to undertake the steep ascent. The cloudless sky lay crystal clear over the still sleeping city and the wide spread snow-covered fields which lay close at hand, beyond the church. On the one side were gardens and the low rambling buildings of the convent, and on the other were huddled high-piled dwellings of poverty.

Muller looked out of each of the four windows in turn. He spent some time at each window, but evidently without discovering what he looked for, for he shook his head in discontent. But when he went once more to the opening in the East, into which the sun was just beginning to pour its light, something seemed to attract his

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis:

every side. They had guns.

"Who are you? What d'ye want?" asts the old man, startled, as three or four took care of the mule's head very quick and quiet.

"Don't be skeered, Daddy Withers," says a drawly voice out of the dark; "we ain't goin' to hurt YOU. We got a little matter o' business to tend to with them two fellers yo' totin' to town."

CHAPTER XIX

Thirty men with guns would be consider- able of a proposition to buck against, so we

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:

As our past rises in reminiscence with all its oldtime reality, no less clearly does our future stand out to us in mirage. What we would be seems as realizable as what we were. Seen by another beside ourselves, our castles in the air take on something of the substance of stereoscopic sight. Our airiest fancies seem solid facts for their reality to her, and gilded by lovelight, they glitter and sparkle like a true palace of the East. For once all is possible; nothing lies beyond our reach. And as we talk, and she listens, we two seem to be floating off into an empyrean of our own like the summer clouds above our heads, as they sail dreamily on into the far-away depths of the unfathomable sky.

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 Statesman by Plato:

YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.

STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.

STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the

Statesman