Today's Stichomancy for Douglas MacArthur

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

the school kids. She kisses them."

"Riding and shooting and kissing the kids," sneered Trampas. "That's a heap too pussy-kitten for me."

They laughed. The sage-brush audience is readily cynical.

"Look for the man, I say," Trampas pursued. "And ain't he there? She leaves Baldy sit on the fence while she and Lin McLean--"

They laughed loudly at the blackguard picture which he drew; and the laugh stopped short, for the Virginian stood over Trampas.

"You can rise up now, and tell them you lie," he said.

The man was still for a moment in the dead silence. "I thought you claimed you and her wasn't acquainted," said he then.

The Virginian

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad:

really I don't understand. Unless a very special intimacy . . ."

She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, "It isn't her name."

"It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a better title to recognition on the part of the world. It didn't strike you so before? Well, it seems to me that choice has got more right to be respected than heredity or law. Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola," she continued in an insinuating voice, "that most rare and fascinating young woman is, as a friend like you cannot deny, outside legality altogether. Even in that she is an exceptional creature. For she is exceptional - you agree?"

I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her.

The Arrow of Gold

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

Ham. My Lord, I haue Newes to tell you. When Rossius an Actor in Rome- Pol. The Actors are come hither my Lord

Ham. Buzze, buzze

Pol. Vpon mine Honor

Ham. Then can each Actor on his Asse- Polon. The best Actors in the world, either for Tragedie, Comedie, Historie, Pastorall: Pastoricall-Comicall-Historicall-Pastorall: Tragicall-Historicall: Tragicall-Comicall-Historicall-Pastorall: Scene indiuidible: or Poem

Hamlet

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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe:

Tieck; and the City of the Sun by Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one

The Fall of the House of Usher