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 The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

fore, I was astonished at his comparative loquac- ity.

"Them shakes leaves me as weak as a kitten, sir," he said, preserving finely that air of uncon- sciousness as to anything but his business a helms- man should never lose. "And before I can pick up my strength that there hot fit comes along and knocks me over again."

He sighed. There was no reproach in his tone, but the bare words were enough to give me a hor- rible pang of self-reproach. It held me dumb for a

The Shadow Line

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo:

marks of the right road, but some heaps of salt, which we could not see. Our camel drivers getting together to consult on this occasion, we suspected they had some ill design in hand, and got ready our weapons; they perceived our apprehensions, and set us at ease by letting us know the reason of their consultation. Travelling hard all night, we found ourselves next morning past the plain; but the road we were in was not more commodious, the points of the rocks pierced our feet; to increase our perplexities we were alarmed with the approach of an armed troop, which our fear immediately suggested to be the Galles, who chiefly beset these passes of the mountains; we put ourselves on the defensive, and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner:

homestead itself; but beside him stood the stranger, and on him all eyes were fixed. Ever and anon the newcomer cast a glance over his pendulous red nose to the spot where the Boer-woman stood, and smiled faintly.

"I'm not a child," cried the Boer-woman, in low Cape Dutch, "and I wasn't born yesterday. No, by the Lord, no! You can't take me in! My mother didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing. I'll have no tramps sleeping on my farm," cried Tant Sannie blowing. "No, by the devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses."

There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp, but a highly respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident three days before.

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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac:

himself, if he continued to go to the house, it was because he had found Mme. de Bargeton to his taste; she was the only woman worth troubling about in Angouleme; he had been paying court to her for want of anything better to do, and now he was desperately in love with her. She would be his before very long, she loved him, everything pointed that way. The conquest of this haughty queen of the society would be his one revenge on the whole houseful of booby clodpates."

Chatelet talked of his passion in the tone of a man who would have a rival's life if he crossed his path. The elderly butterfly of the Empire came down with his whole weight on the poor poet, and tried to frighten and crush him by his self-importance. He grew taller as he