Today's Stichomancy for Rudi Bakhtiar

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber:

No one noticed that dinner was twenty minutes late.

Together they admired the great mahogany buffet that Emma had miraculously found space for in the little dining-room.

"It glows like a great, deep ruby, doesn't it?" she said proudly. "You should see Annie circle around it with the carpet-sweeper. She knows one bump would be followed by instant death."

Looking back on it, afterward, they remembered that the dinner was a very silent one. They did not notice their wordlessness at the time. Once, when the chops came on, Buck said absently,

"Oh, I had those for l----" Then he stopped abruptly.

Emma McChesney & Co.

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

as I later learned from So-ta, for the warm pool where they immersed their bodies as did the shes of the Sto-lu. "Ata," explained So-ta, when I questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal rite; but that was later.

I must have lain there bound and uncomfortable for two or three hours when at last So-ta entered the cave. She carried a sharp knife--mine, in fact, and with it she cut my bonds.

"Come!" she said. "So-ta will go with you back to the Galus. It is time that So-ta left the Band-lu. Together we will go to the Kro-lu, and after that the Galus. To-jo will kill you tonight. He will kill So-ta if he knows that So-ta aided you. We will

The Land that Time Forgot

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon:

men together and impress upon them the need to train themselves, when they ride into the country to their farms, or elsewhere, by leaving the high road and galloping at a round pace on ground of every description.[27] This method will be quite as beneficial to them as the regular march out, and at the same time not produce the same sense of tedium. You may find it useful also to remind them that the state on her side is quite willing to expend a sum of nearly forty talents[28] yearly, so that in the event of war she may not have to look about for cavalry, but have a thoroughly efficient force to hand for active service. Let these ideas be once instilled into their minds, and, mark my words, your trooper will fall with zest to

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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde:

convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

LADY BASILDON. Ah! that accounts for so much in men that I have never understood, and so much in women that their husbands never appreciate in them!

MRS. MARCHMONT. [With a sigh.] Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others for that!

LADY BASILDON. [Emphatically.] Yes, always to others, have we not?

LORD GORING. [Smiling.] And those are the views of the two ladies who are known to have the most admirable husbands in London.

MRS. MARCHMONT. That is exactly what we can't stand. My Reginald is