Today's Stichomancy for Leon Trotsky

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

his arrows and his knife--he would have felt surer with them.

Numa was lying quite flat upon the ground now, presenting only his head. Tarzan would have preferred to fire a little from one side, for he knew what terrific damage the lion could do if he lived two minutes, or even a minute after he was hit. The horse stood trembling in terror at Tarzan's back. The ape-man took a cautious step to one side--Numa but followed him with his eyes. Another step he took, and then another. Numa had not moved. Now he could aim at a point between the eye and the ear.

His finger tightened upon the trigger, and as he fired

The Return of Tarzan

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre:

required to insert a piece into an accidental gap.

Other Spiders are unacquainted with wide-meshed nets and weave satins wherein the threads, crossing at random, form a continuous substance. Among this number is the House Spider (Tegenaria domestica, LIN.). In the corners of our rooms, she stretches wide webs fixed by angular extensions. The best-protected nook at one side contains the owner's secret apartment. It is a silk tube, a gallery with a conical opening, whence the Spider, sheltered from the eye, watches events. The rest of the fabric, which exceeds our finest muslins in delicacy, is not, properly speaking, a hunting- implement: it is a platform whereon the Spider, attending to the

The Life of the Spider

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen:

talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire.

The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up,

Sense and Sensibility

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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" she cried--burying her head in the flowers--and sniffing greedily at the scent. Over the leaves she looked at the man and laughed.

"You are a funny little thing," said he lazily.

"Why? Because I love flowers?"

"I'd far rather you loved other things," said the strange man slowly. She broke off a little pink petal and smiled at it.

"Let me send you some flowers," said the strange man. "I'll send you a roomful if you'd like them."

His voice frightened her slightly. "Oh no, thanks--this one is quite enough for me."