Today's Stichomancy for Hugo Chavez

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift:

smatterer in anatomy knows, that a woman is but an introverted man; a new fusion and flatus will turn the hollow bottom of a bottle into a convexity; but I forbear, (for the sake of my modest men-readers, who are in a few days to be virgins.)

In some subjects, the smallest alterations will do: some men are sufficiently spread about the hips, and contriv'd with female softness, that they want only the negative quantity to make them buxom wenches; and there are women who are, as it were, already the ebauche of a good sturdy man. If nature cou'd be puzzl'd, it will be how to bestow the redundant matter of the exuberant bubbies that now appear about town, or how to roll out the short

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft:

apply it to the corner of her eyes. But my master could not see that it was at all soiled.

The silence which prevailed for a few moments was broken by the gentleman's saying, "As your 'July' was such a very good girl, and had served you so faithfully before she lost her health, don't you think it would have been better to have eman- cipated her?"

"No, indeed I do not!" scornfully exclaimed the lady, as she impatiently crammed the fine handkerchief into a little work-bag. "I have no

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

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:

into the far-away depths of the unfathomable sky.

It would be more than mortal not to believe in ourselves when another believes so absolutely in us. Our most secret thoughts are no longer things to be ashamed of, for she has sanctioned them. Whatever doubt may have shadowed us as to our own imaginings disappears before the smile of her appreciation. That her appreciation may be prejudiced is not a possibility we think of then. She understands us, or seems to do so to our own better understanding of ourselves. Happy the man who is thus understood! Happy even he who imagines that he is, because of her eager wish to comprehend; fortunate, indeed, if in this one respect he never comes

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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells:

and no imaginative initiative, such men as Cladingbowl, for example, or Dayton. They are the scholars-at-large in life. For them the fact that the party system has been essential in the history of England for two hundred years gives it an overwhelming glamour. They have read histories and memoirs, they see the great grey pile of Westminster not so much for what it is as for what it was, rich with dramatic memories, populous with glorious ghosts, phrasing itself inevitably in anecdotes and quotations. It seems almost scandalous that new things should continue to happen, swamping with strange qualities the savour of these old associations.

That Mr. Ramsay Macdonald should walk through Westminster Hall,