Today's Stichomancy for Vladimir Putin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac:

The Secrets of a Princess A Man of Business Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists

Ronceret, Madame Fabien du Beatrix Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists

Rouget, Jean-Jacques A Bachelor's Establishment

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des

The Muse of the Department

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis:

"And this wretched huckster carries her deity about her,--her self-existent soul? How, in God's name, is her life to set it free?"

Holmes said nothing. The coarse sneer could not be answered. Men with pale faces and heavy jaws like his do not carry their religion on their tongue's end; their creeds leave them only in the slow oozing life-blood, false as the creeds may be.

Knowles went on hotly, half to himself, seizing on the new idea fiercely, as men and women do who are yet groping for the truth of life.

"What is it your Novalis says? `The true Shechinah is man.' You

Margret Howth: A Story of To-day

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving:

anything." She was accused of being violent, and of wishing to revenge herself by setting fire to Paris. At length the Revolution broke on France, the Bastille fell, and in that same year an old uncle of Mme. Derues, an ex-soldier of Louis XV., living in Brittany, petitioned for his niece's release. He protested her innocence, and begged that he might take her to his home and restore her to her children. For three years he persisted vainly in his efforts. At last, in the year 1792, it seemed as if they might be crowned with success. He was told that the case would be re-examined; that it was possible that the Parliament had judged unjustly. This good news came to him in

A Book of Remarkable Criminals

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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson:

against the boles - her ear, betweenwhiles, strained to aching and yet unrewarded.

But the slope of the ground was upward, and encouraged her; and presently she issued on a rocky hill that stood forth above the sea of forest. All around were other hill-tops, big and little; sable vales of forest between; overhead the open heaven and the brilliancy of countless stars; and along the western sky the dim forms of mountains. The glory of the great night laid hold upon her; her eyes shone with stars; she dipped her sight into the coolness and brightness of the sky, as she might have dipped her wrist into a spring; and her heart, at that ethereal shock, began to move more