Today's Stichomancy for Nick Lachey

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

fearful and hopeful, for they are future only; courage, like the other sciences, is concerned not only with good and evil of the future, but of the present and past, and of any time?

NICIAS: That, as I suppose, is true.

SOCRATES: Then the answer which you have given, Nicias, includes only a third part of courage; but our question extended to the whole nature of courage: and according to your view, that is, according to your present view, courage is not only the knowledge of the hopeful and the fearful, but seems to include nearly every good and evil without reference to time. What do you say to that alteration in your statement?

NICIAS: I agree, Socrates.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare:

Heere comes the good Macduffe. How goes the world Sir, now? Macd. Why see you not? Ross. Is't known who did this more then bloody deed? Macd. Those that Macbeth hath slaine

Ross. Alas the day, What good could they pretend? Macd. They were subborned, Malcolme, and Donalbaine the Kings two Sonnes Are stolne away and fled, which puts vpon them Suspition of the deed

Macbeth

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske:

penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his habits.

As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt, passing through a lonely glen he came upon an old man

Myths and Myth-Makers

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 Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Brier and fern strove to the blood: The hooked liana in his gin Noosed his reluctant neighbours in: There the green murderer throve and spread, Upon his smothering victims fed, And wantoned on his climbing coil. Contending roots fought for the soil Like frightened demons: with despair Competing branches pushed for air. Green conquerors from overhead Bestrode the bodies of their dead: