Today's Stichomancy for OJ Simpson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And all about was mine, I said, The little sparrows overhead, The little minnows too. This was the world and I was king; For me the bees came by to sing, For me the swallows flew.

I played there were no deeper seas, Nor any wider plains than these, Nor other kings than me. At last I heard my mother call Out from the house at evenfall,

A Child's Garden of Verses

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.

The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized itself.

Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did

Mosses From An Old Manse

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

I hid in some bulrushes and waited. Pretty soon along comes three Injuns, and when they saw where I had taken to the water they stopped and held a short pow-wow. Then they all took to the water. This was what I was waitin' for. When they got nearly acrosst I shot the first redskin, and loadin' quick got a bullet into the others. The last Injun did not sink. I watched him go floatin' down stream expectin' every minute to see him go under as he was hurt so bad he could hardly keep his head above water. He floated down a long ways and the current carried him to a pile of driftwood which had lodged against a little island. I saw the Injun crawl up on the drift. I went down stream and by keepin' the island between me and him I got out to where he was. I pulled my tomahawk and went around the head of the island and found the redskin leanin'

Betty Zane

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 Contrast by Royall Tyler:

Mr. Harper, in their respective characters in this play, with the scenery as given in the last act at the John Street Theater, the first season, but the inferior work of the engraver had made it of little value as likenesses.

The illustration to the song of Alknomook is from music published contemporaneously with the play. This song had long the popularity of a national air and was familiar in every drawing-room in the early part of the century. Its authorship has been accredited both to Philip Freneau and to Mrs. Hunter, the wife of the celebrated English physician, John Hunter. It