Today's Stichomancy for Francisco de Paula Santander

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce:

The Wolves and the Dogs

"WHY should there be strife between us?" said the Wolves to the Sheep. "It is all owing to those quarrelsome dogs. Dismiss them, and we shall have peace."

"You seem to think," replied the Sheep, "that it is an easy thing to dismiss dogs. Have you always found it so?"

The Hen and the Vipers

A HEN who had patiently hatched out a brood of vipers, was accosted by a Swallow, who said: "What a fool you are to give life to creatures who will reward you by destroying you."

"I am a little bit on the destroy myself," said the Hen, tranquilly

Fantastic Fables

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

out of the darkness and near at hand.

"Your boat is back there, madam."

"I know. Thank you. I am just walking about."

The petty officer - he was a petty officer, though Sara Lee had never heard the term - was inclined to be suspicious. Under excuse of lighting his pipe he struck a match, and Sara Lee's young figure stood out in full relief. His suspicions died away with the flare.

"Bad night, miss," he offered.

"Very," said Sara Lee, and turned back again.

This time, bewildered and uneasy, she certainly saw Henri. But he ignored her. He was alone, and smoking one of his interminable

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

and beautiful. Like the rest of his countrymen, he bowed himself in presence of the lustre that surrounded the early career of his mistress. More than once he expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of a genius deemed by his contemporaries to be worthy of the theme. There is not, perhaps, to be found elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of shipwrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one finds in turning the leaves of the volume which contains the beautiful epigram "Nympha Caledoniae" in one part, the "Detectio Mariae Reginae" in another; and this contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the reaction in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been general, and not

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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac:

would gladly have been useful and necessary to him. She reckoned on the charms of habit to keep him by her; she was always ready to open her salons and display the luxury of her dinners and suppers for his friends, and to further his projects. She desired to be for him what Madame de Pompadour was to Louis XV. All actresses envied Florine's position, and some journalists envied that of Raoul.

Those to whom the inclination of the human mind towards chance, opposition, and contrasts is known, will readily understand that after ten years of this lawless Bohemian life, full of ups and downs, of fetes and sheriffs, of orgies and forced sobrieties, Raoul was attracted to the idea of another love,--to the gentle, harmonious