Today's Stichomancy for Alessandra Ambrosio

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry:

the bit go 'round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady's nephew teaches a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl,' says Bill, 'and when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,' says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came 'round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill Bassett.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister:

category. But the causes of that misunderstanding were identically repeated in 1914 and '15.

"1861? Is that also ancient? Perhaps--but very bitter in the memory of many of us now living. The Alabama. The Confederate Commissioners (I know you will say we were wrong there--and so we may have been technically-- but John Bull bullied us into compliance when our hands were tied). Lincoln told his Cabinet 'one war at a time, Gentlemen' and submitted....

"In 1898 we were a strong and powerful nation and a dangerous enemy to provoke. England recognized the fact and acted accordingly. England entered the present war to protect small nations! Heaven save the mark! You surely read your history. Pray tell me something of England's policy

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James:

given her. The feeling she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something larger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble THAT, to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink- stained table. While her grey eyes rested on him - there was a wideish space between these, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them - he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen

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 Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy:

our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support. . .to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective. . .to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak. . . and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversaries, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace; before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.