Today's Stichomancy for Donald Rumsfeld

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott:

friends came forth to welcome them.

But when Queen Dew-Drop touched them with her wand, as they passed in, the light faded from their crowns, their robes became like withered leaves, and their wands were powerless.

Amid the tears of all the Fairies, the Queen led them to the gates, and said,--

"Farewell! It is not in my power to aid you; innocence and love are not within your hearts, and were it not for this untiring little maiden, who has toiled while you have wept, you never would have entered your lost home. Go and strive again, for till all is once more fair and pure, I cannot call you mine."

Flower Fables

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson:

No greater leader.'

While he uttered this, Low to her own heart said the lily maid, 'Save your own great self, fair lord;' and when he fell From talk of war to traits of pleasantry-- Being mirthful he, but in a stately kind-- She still took note that when the living smile Died from his lips, across him came a cloud Of melancholy severe, from which again, Whenever in her hovering to and fro The lily maid had striven to make him cheer,

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

money."

He looked up at me and then out of the window at the sun setting red across the plains. I tried to make him think of something beside himself, but I made a mess of it. The meeting with him was a shock to me. Long after dark, when I had stretched out for the night, I kept thinking of him and contrasting what I had to look forward to with his dismal future. Somehow it did not seem fair, and I could not get rid of the idea that I was selfish.

Next day I had my first sight of real mountains. And the Pennsylvania hills, that all my life had appeared so high, dwindled to nothing. At Trinidad, where we stopped for breakfast, I walked out on the platform

The Young Forester

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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson:

ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to judge how much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice, whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a tenth - or, say a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print you will be in a position to share with us the issue of your calculations.

I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness