Today's Stichomancy for Mikhail Gorbachev

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber:

The blonde lady looked down at her glove tips. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth.

"What's the feminine for black sheep? I'm that. Anyway, I'd be afraid to go home for fear it would be too much of a shock for them when they saw my hair. They wasn't in on the intermediate stages when it was chestnut, auburn, Titian, gold, and orange colored. I want to spare their feelings. The last time they saw me it was just plain brown. Where I come from a woman who dyes her hair when it is beginning to turn gray is considered as good as lost. Funny, ain't it? And yet I remember the minister's wife used to wear false teeth--the kind that clicks. But hair is

Buttered Side Down

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare:

MOUSE. Why, hark you, master: bones, what have you done? What, given away the wench you made me take such pains for? you are wise indeed! mas, and I had known of that I would have had her my self! faither, master, now we may go to breakfast with a woodcoke pie.

SEGASTO. Go, sir, you were best leave this knavery.

KING. Come on, my Lords, let's now to court,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac:

house?"

"Undoubtedly," she replied.

Madame Evangelista did not choose to tell her notary the motive of this heroism, which struck him greatly. Solonet's zeal might have cooled had he known that his client was really intending to leave Bordeaux. She had not as yet said anything about that intention to Paul, in order not to alarm him with the preliminary steps and circumlocutions which must be taken before he entered on the political life she planned for him.

After dinner the two plenipotentiaries left the loving pair with the mother, and betook themselves to an adjoining salon where their

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 A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne:

I. PARDONNEZ-MOI, said the landlord.

I cannot take a fitter opportunity to observe, once for all, that TANT PIS and TANT MIEUX, being two of the great hinges in French conversation, a stranger would do well to set himself right in the use of them, before he gets to Paris.

A prompt French marquis at our ambassador's table demanded of Mr. H-, if he was H- the poet? No, said Mr. H-, mildly. - TANT PIS, replied the marquis.

It is H- the historian, said another, - TANT MIEUX, said the marquis. And Mr. H-, who is a man of an excellent heart, return'd thanks for both.