Today's Stichomancy for Anonymous

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

to a sort of postscript of Aunt Carola's in which she hurriedly wrote that she had forgotten to say she had heard the La Heu family in South Carolina was related to the Bombos, and should be obliged to me if I would make inquiries about this, I told her that it would be easy, and then described to her the Teuton, plying his "antiquity" trade externally while internally cherishing his collected skulls and nursing his scientific rage. All my letters were the more abundant concerning these adventures of mine from my having kept entirely silent upon them at Mrs. Trevise's tea-table. I dreaded Juno when let loose upon the negro question; and the fact that I was beginning to understand her feelings did not at all make me wish to be deafened by them. Neither Juno,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson:

with university work, but his spare hours were fully dedicated to the arts under the eye of a beloved task-mistress. He worked hard and well in the art school, where he obtained a silver medal 'for a couple of legs the size of life drawn from one of Raphael's cartoons.' His holidays were spent in sketching; his evenings, when they were free, at the theatre. Here at the opera he discovered besides a taste for a new art, the art of music; and it was, he wrote, 'as if he had found out a heaven on earth.' 'I am so anxious that whatever he professes to know, he should really perfectly possess,' his mother wrote, 'that I spare no pains'; neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. And so when he

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

665, {kath eilkon auton oi prutaneis kai toxotai}.

[4] For Charmides (maternal uncle of Plato and Glaucon, cousin of Critias) see ch. vii. below; Plato the philosopher, Glaucon's brother, see Cobet, "Pros. Xen." p. 28.

[5] Or, "and in the first instance addressing him in such terms he could not choose but hear, detained him." See above, II. vi. 11. Socrates applies his own theory.

Ah, Glaucon (he exclaimed), so you have determined to become prime minister?[6]

[6] {prostateuein}.

Glauc. Yes, Socrates, I have.

The Memorabilia

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 Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:

'Twas fiddle in the forc's'le -- 'twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left 'em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They're just beyond your skyline, howe'er so far you cruise

Verses 1889-1896