Today's Stichomancy for Benito Juarez

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister:

coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present tenant had answered.

So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis:

electrical current of some sort were being passed through it, and it might forthwith burst into light. Cleggett, as we know, was not easily frightened. But now he was possessed of a strange feeling, akin to terror, but which was at the same time not any terror of physical injury. He did not fear Loge; in dark or daylight he was ready to grapple with him and fight it out; nevertheless he feared. That he could not say what he feared only increased his fear.

Children say they are "afraid of the dark." It is not the dark which they are afraid of. It is the bodiless presences which they imagine in the dark. It was so with Cleggett now. He was

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

PALAMON.

Sir, ha--

ARCITE.

Ile heare no more. [Exit.]

PALAMON.

If he keepe touch, he dies for't. [Exit.]

Scaena 4. (Another part of the forest.)

[Enter Iaylors daughter.]

DAUGHTER.

I am very cold, and all the Stars are out too, The little Stars, and all, that looke like aglets:

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 1492 by Mary Johntson:

We had sweet rest in Guanaja.

A few Indians lived upon this small island, like, yet in some ways unlike all those we knew. But they were rude and simple and they talked always of gods _to the west_. We had rested a week when there came a true wonder to us _from the west_.

That was a canoe, of the mightiest length we had yet seen, long as a tall tree, eight feet wide, no less, with twenty- five rowing Indians--tall, light bronze men--with cotton cloth about their loins. Middle of this giant canoe was built a hut or arbor, thatched with palm. Under this sat a