Today's Stichomancy for Abraham Lincoln

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

They deem that they oblige thee by becoming Muslims. Say, 'Nay! deem not that ye oblige me by your becoming Muslims! God obliges you, by directing you to the faith, if ye do speak the truth!'

Verily, God knows the unseen things of the heavens and the earth, and God on what ye do doth look.

THE CHAPTER OF Q

(L. Mecca.)

IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God.

QAF. By the glorious Koran! nay, they wonder that there has come to them a warner from amongst themselves; and the misbelievers say, 'This is a wondrous thing! What, when we are dead and have become

The Koran

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson:

nation animated with the same desire. Already in 1788 we find the old Jacobitism hand in hand with the new popular doctrine, when, in a letter of indignation against the zeal of a Whig clergyman, he writes: "I daresay the American Congress in 1776 will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the wrong-headed house of Stuart." As time wore on, his sentiments grew more pronounced and even violent; but there was a basis of sense and generous feeling

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

now a little nearer; then she was sure of it, and Betsy and she, both growing more excited every minute, kept pushing each other away from the hole the better to look into it, until at last two little beads of eyes glared out at them, and then it was an easy thing for Tattine to reach in and draw out the prettiest puppy of all.

"Why didn't you tell us there were five, Betsy, and save us all this extra trouble?" and Tattine hurried away to deposit number five in the kennel; but Betsy looked up with the most reproachful look imaginable as though to say, "How much talking could you do if you had to do it all with your eyes and a tail?"

CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES

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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy:

Tess had always sommat strange in her, and she's not now quite like the proud young bride of a well-be-doing man."

They re-entered the vehicle, and were driven along the roads towards Weatherbury and Stagfoot Lane, till they reached the Lane inn, where Clare dismissed the fly and man. They rested here a while, and entering the Vale were next driven onward towards her home by a stranger who did not know their relations. At a midway point, when Nuttlebury had been passed, and where there were cross-roads, Clare stopped the conveyance and said to

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman