Today's Stichomancy for Mitt Romney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

unoffending of birds. "I think you are English?" she said. I acknowledged the fact. "I am reading a great many English books just now--rather, I am studying them."

"Nu," cried Herr Erchardt. "Fancy that! What a bond already! I have made up my mind to know Shakespeare in his mother tongue before I die, but that you, Frau Professor, should be already immersed in those wells of English thought!"

"From what I have read," she said, "I do not think they are very deep wells."

He nodded sympathetically.

"No," he answered, "so I have heard...But do not let us embitter our

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

startling news, B.C. 396.

[6] For the class of Neodamodes, see Arnold's note to Thuc. v. 34 (Jowett, "Thuc." ii. 307); also Thuc. vii. 58; "Hell." I. iii. 15.

The proposal was welcomed with enthusiasm on the part of many. They could not but admire the eagerness of their king to retaliate upon the Persian for his former invasions of Hellas by counter-invasion on his own soil. They liked the preference also which he showed for attacking rather than awaiting his enemy's attack, and his intention to carry on the war at the expense of Persia rather than that of Hellas; but it was the perfection of policy, they felt, so to change the arena of battle, with Asia as the prize of victory instead of Hellas. If we

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy:

anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.

All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept turning something over in his mind.

Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he

War and Peace

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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac:

he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are you not laughing at me?"

"May I die unshriven," he cried vehemently, "if all that I am about to tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty years old, like you at this moment. I was rich, I was handsome, and a noble by birth. I began with the first madness of all--with Love. I loved as no one can love nowadays. I have hidden myself in a chest, at the risk of a dagger thrust, for nothing more than the promise of a kiss. To die for Her-- it seemed to me to be a whole life in itself. In 1760 I fell in love with a lady of the Vendramin family; she was eighteen years old, and married to a Sagredo, one of the richest senators, a man of thirty,