Today's Stichomancy for George Armstrong Custer

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum:

rest in the air a little over the edge of the roof. It seemed firm enough to walk upon, so he took courage and put out the other foot. Dorothy kept hold of his hand and followed him, and soon they were both walking through the air, with the kitten frisking beside them.

"Come on, Jim!" called the boy. "It's all right."

Jim had crept to the edge of the roof to look over, and being a sensible horse and quite experienced, he made up his mind that he could go where the others did. So, with a snort and a neigh and a whisk of his short tail he trotted off the roof into the air and at once began floating downward to the street. His great weight made him fall faster than the children walked, and he passed them on the way

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie:

door on your left."

CHAPTER VIII

THE ADVENTURES OF TOMMY

TAKEN aback though he was by the man's words, Tommy did not hesitate. If audacity had successfully carried him so far, it was to be hoped it would carry him yet farther. He quietly passed into the house and mounted the ramshackle staircase. Everything in the house was filthy beyond words. The grimy paper, of a pattern now indistinguishable, hung in loose festoons from the wall. In every angle was a grey mass of cobweb.

Tommy proceeded leisurely. By the time he reached the bend of

Secret Adversary

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson:

adventure in itself.

There are mingled some dismal memories with so many that were joyous. Of the fisher-wife, for instance, who had cut her throat at Canty Bay; and of how I ran with the other children to the top of the Quadrant, and beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged, and the bandage all bloody - horror! - the fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts, and even to-day (as I recall the scene) darkens daylight. She was lodged in the little old jail in the chief street; but whether or no she died there, with a wise terror of the worst, I never inquired. She had been

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 Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

Another Melchisedec, and another he Who, flying through the air, his son did lose.

Revolving Nature, which a signet is To mortal wax, doth practise well her art, But not one inn distinguish from another;

Thence happens it that Esau differeth In seed from Jacob; and Quirinus comes From sire so vile that he is given to Mars.

A generated nature its own way Would always make like its progenitors, If Providence divine were not triumphant.

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)