Today's Stichomancy for Vladimir Putin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Look at the cloth of my apparel; Try me and test me, lock and barrel; And own, to give the devil his due, I have made more of life than you. Yet I nor sought nor risked a life; I shudder at an open knife; The perilous seas I still avoided And stuck to land whate'er betided. I had no gold, no marble quarry, I was a poor apothecary, Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne:

needn't do the same with you, because you understand it for yourself.'

'Are you going to berth here?' asked Herrick, following the captain into the stateroom, where he began to adjust the chronometer in its place at the bed-head.

'Not much!' replied he. 'I guess I'll berth on deck. I don't know as I'm afraid, but I've no immediate use for confluent smallpox.'

'I don't know that I'm afraid either,' said Herrick. 'But the thought of these two men sticks in my throat; that captain and mate dying here, one opposite to the other. It's grim. I wonder

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest:

An' acquirin' silken mufflers of their own to guard their throats; An' a Russian wolf-hound puppy left its mother yesterday, An' a tinge o' sorrow touched us as we saw it go away. For the sight was full o' meanin', an' we knew, when it had gone, 'Twas a symbol of the partin's that the years are bringin' on. Oh, a feller must be better -- to his faith he can't

A Heap O' Livin'

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 First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells:

mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. They check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and display of his facility, his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in his own line. His brain glows continually larger, at least so far as the portions engaging in mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs shrivel, his heart

The First Men In The Moon