Today's Stichomancy for Jet Li

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey:

One day August Naab showed in few words how significant a factor the sun was in the lives of desert men.

"We've got to turn back," he said to Hare. "The sun's getting hot and the snow will melt in the mountains. If the Colorado rises too high we can't cross."

They were two days in riding back to the encampment. Eschtah received them in dignified silence, expressive of his regret. When their time of departure arrived he accompanied them to the head of the nearest trail, which started down from Saweep Peak, the highest point of Echo Cliffs. It was the Navajos' outlook over the Painted Desert.

"Mescal is there," said August Naab." She's there with the slave Eschtah

The Heritage of the Desert

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton:

she added: "Here he is--you can ask him yourself."

She met Darrow's knock with an invitation to enter, and he came into the room and paused between herself and Owen. She was struck, as he stood there, by the contrast between his happy careless good-looks and her step-son's frowning agitation.

Darrow met her eyes with a smile. "Am I too soon? Or is our walk given up?"

"No; I was just going to get ready." She continued to linger between the two, looking slowly from one to the other. "But there's something we want to tell you first: Owen is engaged

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth:

forty miles for the small sum of 1s. Can this be done? I think it can, and done to pay the railway companies; otherwise there is no ground to hope for this part of my Scheme ever being realised. But I think that this great boon can be granted to the poor people without the dividends being sensibly affected. I am told that the cost of haulage for an ordinary passenger train, carrying from five hundred to a thousand persons, is 2s. 7d. per mile; a railway company could take six hundred passengers seventy miles there, and bring them seventy miles back, at a cost of #18 1s. 8d. Six hundred passengers at a shilling is #30, so that there would be a clear profit to the company of nearly #12 on the haulage, towards the payment of interest on the capital, wear

In Darkest England and The Way Out

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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon:

taken to make the mouth and jaws soft; and the same means and appliances which will render a man's flesh and skin soft, will serve to soften and supple a horse's mouth.[11]

[11] Or, "may be used with like effect on a horse's mouth," i.e. bathing, friction, oil. See Pollux, i. 201.

It is the duty of a horseman, as we think, to have his groom trained thoroughly in all that concerns the treatment of the horse. In the first place, then, the groom should know that he is never to knot the halter[1] at the point where the headstall is attached to the horse's head. By constantly rubbing his head against the manger, if the halter

On Horsemanship