Today's Stichomancy for George Bernard Shaw

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey:

glimpse of Longstreth as he went in. For all Duane could see, he appeared to be a calm and quiet man, intense beneath the surface, with an air of dignity under insult. Duane's chance to observe Lawson was lost. They went into the house without speaking and closed the door.

At the other end of the porch, close under a window, was an offset between step and wall, and there in the shadow Duane hid. So Duane waited there in the darkness with patience born of many hours of hiding.

Presently a lamp was lit; and Duane heard the swish of skirts.

"Something's happened surely, Ruth," he heard Miss Longstreth

The Lone Star Ranger

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

grog shops, gambling dens, opium dens. We walked up narrow lanes where our gharry--a tiny box of a thing on wheels, attached to a jibbing Bur- mah pony--could by no means have passed. The constable seemed to be on terms of scornful inti- macy with Maltese, with Eurasians, with China- men, with Klings, and with the sweepers attached to a temple, with whom he talked at the gate. We interviewed also through a grating in a mud wall closing a blind alley an immensely corpulent Ital- ian, who, the ex-sergeant-major remarked to me

Falk

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

coppersmiths and carpenters, ironfounders and cobblers, painters and decorators--one and all busily engaged in fabricating the implements of war; so that an onlooker might have thought the city of Ephesus itself a gigantic arsenal. It would have kindled courage in the breast of a coward to see the long lines of soldiers, with Agesilaus at their head, all garlanded as they marched in proud procession from the gymnasiums and dedicated their wreaths to our Lady Artemis. Since, where these three elements exist--reverence towards heaven, practice in military affairs, and obedience to command--all else must needs be full of happy promise.

But seeing that contempt for the foe is calculated to infuse a certain

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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson:

his hand upon a trunk: "I like these people," said he.

"They are not people at all," said the philosopher. "Come along."

Next they came through a meadow where there were cows.

"These are very dirty people," said the stranger.

"They are not people at all," said the philosopher; and he explained what a cow is in scientific words which I have forgotten.

"That is all one to me," said the stranger. "But why do they never look up?"

"Because they are graminivorous," said the philosopher; "and to live upon grass, which is not highly nutritious, requires so close an attention to business that they have no time to think, or speak,