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 The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

Who oped Faenza when the people slep."

Already we had gone away from him, When I beheld two frozen in one hole, So that one head a hood was to the other;

And even as bread through hunger is devoured, The uppermost on the other set his teeth, There where the brain is to the nape united.

Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed The temples of Menalippus in disdain, Than that one did the skull and the other things.

"O thou, who showest by such bestial sign

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

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

a wound before that usurpation. Judas had certainly given some murderous blow to Jesus before he betrayed him. We have within us an inward power of sight, an eye of the soul which foresees catastrophes; and the repugnance that comes over us against the fateful being is the result of that foresight. Though religion orders us to conquer it, distrust remains, and its voice is forever heard. Would Oscar, at twenty years of age, have the wisdom to listen to it?

Alas! when, at half-past two o'clock, Oscar entered the salon of the Rocher de Cancale,--where were three invited persons besides the clerks, to wit: an old captain of dragoons, named Giroudeau; Finot, a journalist who might procure an engagement for Florentine at the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo:

God wills that he shall be innocent.

If one were to ask that enormous city: "What is this?" she would reply: "It is my little one."

CHAPTER II

SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS

The gamin--the street Arab--of Paris is the dwarf of the giant.

Let us not exaggerate, this cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but, in that case, he owns but one; he sometimes has shoes, but then they have no soles; he sometimes has a lodging, and he loves it, for he finds his mother there; but he prefers the street, because there he finds liberty. He has his own games, his own bits

Les Miserables

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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris:

than four or five hours a day), decided to take a few minutes to examine the problem before he tried to solve it.

"Just what is it the king wants to do?" he asked himself. "He wants to send his mail quickly. And just what is mail? It's a message, information. Information, hmm. Information can be sent electronically, by wire or transmission. Yes. Hmm. Yes--A transmitter on one end and a printer on the other end would permit the king's mail to be sent at the speed of light. That should pretty much squash Sir Rodney's proposal to use battery-powered frisbees."

Well, what can we say? The brilliance of this proposal was so obvious that Sir Reginald was declared the winner and the plan was