Today's Stichomancy for James Legge

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton:

capital cigar you've given me."

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his own reflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the clever criminals never ARE caught?"

"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved." The lawyer ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance in your own family: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph Lenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be explained?"

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac:

with the air of a man who can keep another's counsel, that the Vicomtesse must know the purpose of this visit perfectly well; while the Vicomtesse, in all sincerity, had no notion what it could be. Mme. de Beauseant, in perplexity, connected Gaston with people whom he had never met, went astray after various wild conjectures, and asked herself if she had seen this M. de Nueil before. In truth, no love- letter, however sincere or skilfully indited, could have produced so much effect as this riddle. Again and again Mme. de Beauseant puzzled over it.

When Gaston heard that he might call upon the Vicomtesse, his rapture at so soon obtaining the ardently longed-for good fortune was mingled

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic.

We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct. We

On the Origin of Species

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 Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

ONE OF THE MEN. Oh, she's no Witch. I'll swear that Goodwife Corey Never did harm to any living creature. She's a good woman, if there ever was one.

GLOYD. Well, we shall see. As for that Bridget Bishop, She has been tried before; some years ago A negro testified he saw her shape Sitting upon the rafters in a barn, And holding in its hand an egg; and while He went to fetch his pitchfork, she had vanished.