Today's Stichomancy for Douglas MacArthur

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain:

She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was any custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers--just words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.

Friday

She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have always done it--always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and the coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for something. She says they were only made for scenery--like the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. it was Gatsby's mansion. Or, rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires--all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I'd known Tom

The Great Gatsby

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac:

the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a woman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I could displease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dread lest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evil demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, or that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my life--that I were doomed to remain such as I am?--Fatal doubts!

"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is power. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure every ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you were

Louis Lambert

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 The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

close, looking down at her.

"I've said a lot I didn't mean to," he said. "There's only one thing I haven't said, I oughtn't to say it, dear. I'm not going to marry you--I won't have such a thing on my conscience. But it doesn't hurt a woman to know that a man loves her. I love you, dear. You're my heaven and my earth--even my God, I'm afraid. But I will not marry you."

"Not even if I ask you to?"

"Not even then, dear. To share my struggle--"

"I see," slowly. "It is to be a struggle?"

"A hard fight, Harmony. I'm a pauper practically."