Today's Stichomancy for Jay Leno

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare:

And therefore must you take your solemn oaths, That you heard Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, Did wish a dagger at King Henry's heart. Fear not to swear it, for I heard him speak it; Therefore we'll shield you from ensuing harms.

SECOND WITNESS. If you will warrant us the deed is good, We'll undertake it.

GARDINER. Kneel down, and I will here absolve you both. This Crucifix I lay upon your head,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

and everybody talks at once, and as loudly as they can, and at some of them they only have tea and a little cake or something like that to eat," and Tattine glanced at the kitchen-table over by the window with a smile and a shake of the head, as though very much better pleased with what she saw there. A pair of chickens lay ready for broiling on a blue china platter. Several ears of corn were husked ready for the pot they were to be boiled in. A plate of cold potatoes looked as though waiting for the frying-pan, and from the depths of a glass fruit-dish a beautiful pile of Fall-pippins towered up to a huge red apple at the top.

"Indade, thin, but we'll do our best," said Mrs. Kirk, "to make it as different from what you be calling a city 'At Home' as possible, and now

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

you must establish over them, if you mean to accomplish any noble action really worthy of yourself and of the state.

ALCIBIADES: That would certainly be my aim.

SOCRATES: Verily, then, you have good reason to be satisfied, if you are better than the soldiers; and you need not, when you are their superior and have your thoughts and actions fixed upon them, look away to the generals of the enemy.

ALCIBIADES: Of whom are you speaking, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Why, you surely know that our city goes to war now and then with the Lacedaemonians and with the great king?

ALCIBIADES: True enough.

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 The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus:

CLIV

The dress is suited to the craft; the craftsman takes his name from the craft, not from the dress. For this reason Euphrates was right in saying, "I long endeavoured to conceal my following the philosophic life; and this profited me much. In the first place, I knew that what I did aright, I did not for the sake of lookers-on, but for my own. I ate aright--unto myself; I kept the even tenor of my walk, my glance composed and serene-- all unto myself and unto God. Then as I fought alone, I was alone in peril. If I did anything amiss or shameful, the cause of Philosophy was not in me endangered; nor did I wrong the

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus