Today's Stichomancy for Martin Luther King Jr.

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke:

life into which, unless I am mistaken, you have made an equally unwilling and embarrassed entrance, and in which you have been surprised to find yourself not only up to your neck, but over,--and you are a lucky man if you have had the presence of mind to stand still for a moment, before wading out, and make sure at least of the fish that tempted you into your predicament.

But Rocky Run, they say, exists no longer. It has been blasted by miners out of all resemblance to itself, and bewitched into a dingy water-power to turn wheels for the ugly giant, Trade. It is only in the valley of remembrance that its current still flows like liquid air; and only in that country that you can still see the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

JANE PORTER.

Tarzan sat with gaze fixed upon the floor for nearly an hour. It was evident to him from the notes that they did not know that he and Tarzan of the Apes were one and the same.

"I have given my heart to another," he repeated over and over again to himself.

Then she did not love him! How could she have pretended love, and raised him to such a pinnacle of hope only to cast him down to such utter depths of despair!

Maybe her kisses were only signs of friendship. How did he know, who knew nothing of the customs of human beings?

Tarzan of the Apes

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles:

Flout then both Creon and my words, for none Of mortals shall be striken worse than thou.

OEDIPUS Must I endure this fellow's insolence? A murrain on thee! Get thee hence! Begone Avaunt! and never cross my threshold more.

TEIRESIAS I ne'er had come hadst thou not bidden me.

OEDIPUS I know not thou wouldst utter folly, else Long hadst thou waited to be summoned here.

Oedipus Trilogy

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 Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo:

was usually weakened by her still greater desire to excite increased wonder in the faces of her visitors.

Divided between these two inclinations, she gazed at Julia now; the shining eyes of the deacon's daughter conquered, and she launched forth into an eager description of how she had just seen a "wondeful striped anamule" with a "pow'ful long neck walk right out of the tent," and how he had "come apart afore her very eyes," and two men had slipped "right out a' his insides." Mandy was so carried away by her own eloquence and so busy showing Julia the sights beyond the window, that she did not hear Miss Perkins, the thin-lipped spinster, who entered, followed by the