Today's Stichomancy for John F. Kennedy

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

Grote, "Plato," III. ch. xxxix.; Boeckh, op. cit. (pp. 4, 37, 136, 600 seq. Eng. tr.) Cf. Demosth. "de Sym." for another scheme, 354 B.C., which shows the "sound administrative and practical judgment" of the youthful orator as compared with "the benevolent dreams and ample public largess in which Xenophon here indulges." --Grote, op. cit. p. 601.

[17] L40:12:4 = 1000 drachmae.

[18] I.e. exactly 18 or nearly 20 per cent. The following table will make the arithmetic clear:--

6 ob. = 1 drachma 10 minae = 6000 ob. 100 dr. = 1 mina = 1000 dr.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic:

he rubbed against in that melancholy exodus, and deemed of much greater promise than himself, had done badly. Somehow he did well. He learned the wheelwright's trade, and really that seemed all there was to tell. The rest had been calm and sequent progression--steady employment as a journeyman first; then marriage and a house and lot; the modest start as a master; the move to Octavius and cheap lumber; the growth of his business, always marked of late years stupendous--all following naturally, easily, one thing out of another. Jeremiah encountered the idea among his fellows, now and again, that he was

The Damnation of Theron Ware

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

to which he made the other?

HERMOGENES: To the latter, I should imagine.

SOCRATES: Might not that be justly called the true or ideal shuttle?

HERMOGENES: I think so.

SOCRATES: And whatever shuttles are wanted, for the manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen, or other material, ought all of them to have the true form of the shuttle; and whatever is the shuttle best adapted to each kind of work, that ought to be the form which the maker produces in each case.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same holds of other instruments: when a man has

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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells:

have been quite alive, quite significant, quite adequate in Asia Minor or Egypt, among men essentially orientals, fifteen hundred years ago, but which now--Ä

He expressed just what they came to now by a gesture.

She echoed his gesture.

"Probably I'm not alone among my brethren," he went on, and then: "But what is one to do?"

With her hands she acted her sense of his difficulty.

"One may be precipitate," he said. "There's a kind of loyalty and discipline that requires one to keep the ranks until one's course of action is perfectly clear. One owes so much to so many.