Today's Stichomancy for Karl Rove

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

caught in a sheet of fly paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is finally quiet with the sticky stillness of despair?

Well, I was the fly. I had seen too much of circumstantial evidence to have any belief that the establishing of my identity would weigh much against the other incriminating details. It meant imprisonment and trial, probably, with all the notoriety and loss of practice they would entail. A man thinks quickly at a time like that. All the probable consequences of the finding of that pocket-book flashed through my mind as I extended my hand to take it. Then I drew my arm back.

"I don't want it," I said. "Look inside. Maybe the other man took

The Man in Lower Ten

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll:

Yet, I feel it my duty to say, Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm, For the Baker had fainted away.

Fit the Third

THE BAKER'S TALE

They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice-- They roused him with mustard and cress-- They roused him with jam and judicious advice-- They set him conundrums to guess.

When at length he sat up and was able to speak, His sad story he offered to tell;

The Hunting of the Snark

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac:

not taken me on as his collaborator, he has not give me so much as a five-franc piece, but I hold out a hand to grasp his when we meet; I cannot help myself."

"And why?" Lucien, asked, indignantly.

"I may want to put a dozen lines into his feuilleton some day," Lousteau answered coolly. "In short, my dear fellow, in literature you will not make money by hard work, that is not the secret of success; the point is to exploit the work of somebody else. A newspaper proprietor is a contractor, we are the bricklayers. The more mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all

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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac:

based on the Hoc est corpus. What floods of blood were shed to establish the Fete-Dieu, the Festival of Corpus Christi--the institution by which Rome established her triumph in the question of the Real Presence, a schism which rent the Church during three centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouse against the Albigenses were the tail end of that dispute. The Vaudois and the Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation."

In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his most atheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or, to be accurate, a vile imitation of the Citateur.

"Hallo! where is my worshiper of this morning?" said Bianchon to