Today's Stichomancy for Douglas MacArthur

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

every one looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the marquis was going about as a bear-leader, if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast was supposed to have found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity. Newman found his reception among the marquis's friends very "pleasant;" he could not have said more for it. It was pleasant to be treated with so much explicit politeness; it was pleasant to hear neatly turned civilities, with a flavor of wit, uttered from beneath carefully-shaped mustaches;

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde:

creation, and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not; that is your theory, I believe?

GILBERT. Yes, that is my theory. To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticises. The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and the Beauty, that gives to creation its universal and aesthetic element, makes the critic a creator in his turn, and whispers of a thousand different things which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or painted the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac:

trust. My dear Dumay, if I write this letter to you it is because I am anxious to keep my fortune a secret for the present. I therefore leave to you the happiness of preparing my dear angels for my return. I have had enough of commerce; and I am resolved to leave Havre. My intention is to buy back the estate of La Bastie, and to entail it, so as to establish an estate yielding at least a hundred thousand francs a year, and then to ask the king to grant that one of my sons-in-law may succeed to my name and title. You know, my poor Dumay, what a terrible misfortune overtook us through the fatal reputation of a large fortune,--my daughter's honor was lost. I have therefore resolved that the amount of my

Modeste Mignon

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 Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates:

insane, when found. At any rate, with the aid of artificial respiration- "

"Rubbish!" said Daphne. "Some one must hear us soon."

"My dear, the noise we can make wouldn't flush a titlark at twenty paces. No, no!" he went on airily, "a lingering death awaits us. I only wish my caddie was here, too. Is anyone's tongue swelling? That's a sure sign. Directly you feel that, you know you're thirsty."

"Fool!" said his wife, "Besides, they'll miss the key soon."

"Where is the key?" said Jonah. "If we once lose that, we shall never find it again."

The Brother of Daphne