Today's Stichomancy for Ringo Starr

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton:

power.

"But Mr. Elwell's lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I suppose the suit was withdrawn by their advice."

"Oh, yes, they knew he hadn't a leg to stand on, technically. It was when they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate. You see, he'd borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he was up a tree. That's why he shot himself when they told him he had no show."

The horror was sweeping over Mary in great, deafening waves.

"He shot himself? He killed himself because of THAT? "

"Well, he didn't kill himself, exactly. He dragged on two months

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon:

bank;[1] or, jump down from a height, the rider must teach and train himself and his horse to meet all emergencies. In this way the two will have a chance of saving each the other, and may be expected to increase their usefulness.

[1] {ekpedan} = exsilire in altum (Sturz, and so Berenger); "to leap over ditches, and upon high places and down from them."

And here, if any reader should accuse us of repeating ourselves, on the ground that we are only stating now what we said before on the same topics,[2] we say that this is not mere repetition. In the former case, we confined ourselves to advising the purchaser before he concluded his bargain to test whether the horse could do those

On Horsemanship

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

'When are you to marry the Duke?'

"The thrust was so direct, my gaze met hers so boldly, and her hand lay so tightly in mine, that her start, slight as it was, could not be disguised; her eyes fell before mine, and a faint blush colored her cheeks.--'The Duke! What do you mean?' she said, affecting great astonishment.--'I know everything,' replied I; 'and in my opinion, you should delay no longer; he is rich; he is a duke; but he is more than devout, he is religious! I am sure, therefore, that you have been faithful to me, thanks to his scruples. You cannot imagine how urgently necessary it is that you should compromise him with himself and with God; short of that you will never bring him to the point.'--

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 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain:

harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any -- even to the noble himself -- unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the THING, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize -- and in but indifferently modified measure -- the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feel- ing. They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of re-

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court