Today's Stichomancy for Joseph Stalin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London:

emotions, we were capable of long-cherished purpose. The faithfulness of the monogamic couples I have referred to may be explained as a matter of habit; but my long desire for the Swift One cannot be so explained, any more than can be explained the undying enmity between me and Red-Eye.

But it was our inconsequentiality and stupidity that especially distresses me when I look back upon that life in the long ago. Once I found a broken gourd which happened to lie right side up and which had been filled with the rain. The water was sweet, and I drank it. I

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis:

another woman, and that was by way of a plutonic admiration, and no flirting intended, he says. And even then it was before he had met his own little woman. And that other woman, he says, was plump too, fur he wouldn't never look at none but a plump woman.

"What did she weigh?" asts Watty's wife. He tells her a measly little three hundred pound.

"But she wasn't refined like my little woman," says Watty, "and when I seen that I passed her up." And inch by inch Watty coaxed her clean

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

[8] Or, "a late start means the hounds will be robbed of a find and the huntsman of his reward."

The net-keeper should wear a light costume. His business is to fix the nets about the runs,[9] paths, bends, and hollows, and darksome spots, brooks, dry torrents, or perennial mountain streams. These are the places to which the hare chiefly betakes itself for refuge; though there are of course endless others. These, and the side passages into, and exits from them, whether well marked or ill defined, are to be stopped just as day breaks; not too early, so that, in case the line of nets be in the neighbourhood of covert to be searched for game,[10] the animal may not be scared at hearing the thud close by.[11] If, on

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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton:

silence, vague fears began to assail the elder sister. Perhaps Evelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but a man who could not even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled the layer of dust in Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disorder mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister's illness. But surely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote a small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not an insuperable embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was that both the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease which left them powerless to summon her--for summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she or her