Today's Stichomancy for Winston Churchill

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

despicable than to falsify from Revenge, but can you Maria feel thus [f]or others and be unkind to me alone--nay is hope to be denied the tenderest Passion.--

MARIA. Why will you distress me by renewing this subject--

SURFACE. Ah! Maria! you would not treat me thus and oppose your guardian's Sir Peter's wishes--but that I see that my Profligate Brother is still a favour'd Rival.

MARIA. Ungenerously urged--but whatever my sentiments of that unfortunate young man are, be assured I shall not feel more bound to give him up because his Distresses have sunk him so low as to deprive him of the regard even of a Brother.

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

the information. He saw not only one reward but sev- eral and a glorious publicity which far transcended the most sanguine of his former dreams. He saw his picture not only in the Oakdale Tribune but in the newspapers of every city of the country. Assuming a stern and arro- gant expression, or rather what he thought to be such, he posed, mentally, for the newspaper cameramen; and such is the power of association of ideas that he was presently strolling nonchalantly before a battery of mo- tion picture machines. "Gee!" he murmured, "wont the other fellers be sore! I s'ppose Pinkerton'll send for me

The Oakdale Affair

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

1_Samuel 17: 9 If he be able to fight with me, and kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.'

1_Samuel 17: 10 And the Philistine said: 'I do taunt the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.'

1_Samuel 17: 11 And when Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.

1_Samuel 17: 12 Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Beth-lehem in Judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons; and the man was an old man in the days of Saul, stricken in years among men.

1_Samuel 17: 13 And the three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle; and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the first-born, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.

1_Samuel 17: 14 And David was the youngest; and the three eldest followed Saul.--

1_Samuel 17: 15 Now David went to and fro from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Beth-lehem.--

1_Samuel 17: 16 And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.

1_Samuel 17: 17 And Jesse said unto David his son: 'Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to thy brethren.

The Tanach

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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.

All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes, And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits, And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep; Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep. Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young, The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue, The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth, And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.

Ballads