Today's Stichomancy for Howard Stern

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther:

us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." (I Cor. 4:9.) Again, "Unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; And labour, working with our hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day." (I Cor. 4:11-13.)

VERSE 18. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

This is the Apostle's farewell. He ends his Epistle as he began it by wishing the Galatians the grace of God. We can hear him say: "I have presented

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad:

black. While she was little she was to be seen sometimes about the streets attended by a negro woman, but since she became of age to put her hair up I don't think she has set foot outside that garden once. She must be over eighteen now."

Thus my friend, with some added details; such as, that he didn't think the girl had spoken to three people of any position in the island; that an elderly female relative of the brothers Jacobus had been induced by extreme poverty to accept the position of gouvernante to the girl. As to Jacobus's business (which certainly annoyed his brother) it was a wise choice on his part. It brought him in contact only with strangers of passage; whereas any other

'Twixt Land & Sea

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

be that his self-constructed idols prove to the maker too suggestive of his own intellectual chisel to deceive him for long, or whether sacred soil, like less hallowed ground, becomes after a time incapable of responding to repeated sowings of the same seed, certain it is that in spiritual matters most peoples have grown out of conceit with their own conceptions. An individual may cling with a certain sentiment to the religion of his mother, but nations have shown anything but a foolish fondness for the sacred superstitions of their great-grandfathers. To the charm of creation succeeds invariably the bitter-sweet after-taste of criticism, and man would not be the progressive animal he is if he long remained in love with

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 McTeague by Frank Norris:

her work, scrubbing the floor of some vacant house; or in her room, in the morning, as she made her coffee on the oil stove, or when she woke in the night, a brusque access of cupidity would seize upon her. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistened, her breath came short. At times she would leave her work just as it was, put on her old bonnet of black straw, throw her shawl about her, and go straight to Uncle Oelbermann's store and draw against her money. Now it would be a hundred dollars, now sixty; now she would content herself with only twenty; and once, after a fortnight's abstinence, she permitted herself a positive debauch of five

McTeague