Today's Stichomancy for Leo Tolstoy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane:

The parent continually wondered how her daughter could come to such a pass. She had never considered Maggie as a pearl dropped unstained into Rum Alley from Heaven, but she could not conceive how it was possible for her daughter to fall so low as to bring disgrace upon her family. She was terrific in denunciation of the girl's wickedness.

The fact that the neighbors talked of it, maddened her. When women came in, and in the course of their conversation casually asked, "Where's Maggie dese days?" the mother shook her fuzzy head at them and appalled them with curses. Cunning hints inviting confidence she rebuffed with violence.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain:

the guard!' and then . . . do you catch that refreshing early- morning whiff from the mountain-pines and the wild flowers? The night is far spent; we'll hear the bugles before long. Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and nice; she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and is Brigadier-General Alison's mother, which makes her mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General. That is what Shekels says. At least it is what I think he says, though I never can understand him quite clearly. He - "

"Who is Shekels?"

"The Seventh Cavalry dog. I mean, if he IS a dog. His father was a coyote and his mother was a wild-cat. It doesn't really make a

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

indeed to occupie the argument no longer. Enter Nurse and her man.

Rom. Here's a goodly geare. A sayle, a sayle

Mer. Two, two: a Shirt and a Smocke

Nur. Peter? Peter. Anon

Nur. My Fan Peter? Mer. Good Peter to hide her face? For her Fans the fairer face? Nur. God ye good morrow Gentlemen

Romeo and Juliet

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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome:

village or a railway station or the passage of a river. Small hostile groups will engage in mortal combat to decide the possession of a desirable hut in which to sleep, but, except at these rare points of actual contact, the number of prisoners is far in excess of the number of casualties. Parties on each side will be perfectly ignorant of events to right or left of them, ignorant even of their gains and losses. Last year I ran into Whites in a village which the Reds had assured me was

strongly held by themselves, and these same Whites refused to believe that the village where I had spent the preceding night was in the possession of the Reds. It is largely an