Today's Stichomancy for Jane Seymour

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey:

``Con, where did you find that?''

I cut short their chaffing with a sharp order for batting practice.

``Regular line-up, now no monkey biz,'' I went on. ``Take two cracks and a bunt. Here, Hurtle,'' I said, drawing him toward the pitcher's box, ``don't pay any attention to their talk. That's only the fun of ball players. Go in now and practice a little. Lam a few over.''

Hurtle's big freckled hands closed nervously over the ball. I thought it best not to say more

The Redheaded Outfield

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

Euhemerists in Hellas long before Euhemerus. Early philosophers, like Anaxagoras and Metrodorus, had found in Homer and mythology hidden meanings. Plato, with a truer instinct, rejects these attractive interpretations; he regards the inventor of them as 'unfortunate;' and they draw a man off from the knowledge of himself. There is a latent criticism, and also a poetical sense in Plato, which enable him to discard them, and yet in another way to make use of poetry and mythology as a vehicle of thought and feeling. What would he have said of the discovery of Christian doctrines in these old Greek legends? While acknowledging that such interpretations are 'very nice,' would he not have remarked that they are found in all sacred literatures? They cannot be tested by any criterion of

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne:

neither sleep nor eat until I have found it out."

My comment on this was a half-suppressed "Oh!"

"Nor you either, Axel," he added.

"The deuce!" said I to myself; "then it is lucky I have eaten two dinners to-day!"

"First of all we must find out the key to this cipher; that cannot be difficult."

At these words I quickly raised my head; but my uncle went on soliloquising.

"There's nothing easier. In this document there are a hundred and thirty-two letters, viz., seventy-seven consonants and fifty-five

Journey to the Center of the Earth

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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson:

of your own. The man from Honolulu - miserable, leering creature - communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking - drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage," that you chose to communicate the sickening story; and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your "dear brother" - a brother indeed - made haste to deliver up your letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers;