Today's Stichomancy for Joseph Stalin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne:

My companions were suffering too, and not one of us dared touch this wretched remnant of our goodly store.

But now we were mounting up with excessive speed. Sometimes the air would cut our breath short, as is experienced by aeronauts ascending too rapidly. But whilst they suffer from cold in proportion to their rise, we were beginning to feel a contrary effect. The heat was increasing in a manner to cause us the most fearful anxiety, and certainly the temperature was at this moment at the height of 100° Fahr.

What could be the meaning of such a change? Up to this time facts had supported the theories of Davy and of Liedenbrock; until now

Journey to the Center of the Earth

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac:

children. The matter is serious. There are questions of public utility involved which will have to be examined. The interests of the city of Paris might suffer. Therefore if the matter depended on me, which it does not, I could not decide /hic et nunc/; I should require a report."

A /report/ is to the present system of administration what limbo or hades is to Christianity. Jacquet knew very well the mania for "reports"; he had not waited until this occasion to groan at that bureaucratic absurdity. He knew that since the invasion into public business of the /Report/ (an administrative revolution consummated in 1804) there was never known a single minister who would take upon

Ferragus

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.

Two Quatrains

Unity

As eons of incalculable strife Are in the vision of one moment caught, So are the common, concrete things of life Divinely shadowed on the walls of Thought.

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 Cavalry General by Xenophon:

desire. If for no other reason, through sheer stress of numbers there will be collisions, and much damage done by kicks through mutual entanglement; whereas a pick of horse and men will be able to escape offhand,[15] especially if you have invention to create a scare in the minds of the pursuers by help of the moiety of troops who are out of action.[16] For this purpose false ambuscades will be of use.

[15] Or, "by themselves," reading {ex auton}, as L. Dind. suggests. Cf. Polyb. x. 40. 6, or if as vulg. {ex auton} (sub. {kheiron}, Weiske), transl. "to slip through their fingers."

[16] Zeune and other commentators cf Liv. v. 38 (Diod. xiv. 114), but the part played by the Roman subsidiarii at the battle of the