Today's Stichomancy for Jon Stewart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris:

of the telephone wires that connected each of the division houses, reporting the condition of the work, the number of acres covered, the prospects of each plough traversing its daily average of twenty miles.

At half-past twelve, Vanamee and the rest of the drivers ate their lunch in the field, the tin buckets having been distributed to them that morning after breakfast. But in the evening, the routine of the previous day was repeated, and Vanamee, unharnessing his team, riding one horse and leading the others, returned to the division barns and bunk-house.

It was between six and seven o'clock. The half hundred men of

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon:

for the convening of a General Council. The same matter was thus publicly set forth at greater length a year ago at the last Diet which met at Spires. There Your Imperial Majesty, through His Highness Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, our friend and clement Lord, as well as through the Orator and Imperial Commissioners caused this, among other things, to be submitted: that Your Imperial Majesty had taken notice of; and pondered, the resolution of Your Majesty's Representative in the Empire, and of the President and Imperial Counselors, and the Legates from other Estates convened at Ratisbon, concerning the calling of a Council, and that your Imperial Majesty also judged it to be

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

What was the matter now? You will naturally think that it was an appointment with his ladylove which he had forgotten; this was certainly my supposition as I turned again to the front door. There stood one of the waitresses, glaring with her white eyes half out of her black face at the already distant back of John Mayrant.

"Oh!" I thought; but, before I could think any more, the tall, dreadful boarder--the lady whom I secretly called Juno--swept up the steps, and by me into the house, with a dignity that one might term deafening.

The waitress now muttered, or rather sang, a series of pious apostrophes. "Oh, Lawd, de rampages and de ructions! Oh, Lawd, sinner is in my way, Daniel!" She was strongly, but I think pleasurably, excited; and she next

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 Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare:

I would accompt that loss my vantage too.

KING EDWARD. Thinkst that thou canst unswear thy oath again?

WARWICK. I cannot; nor I would not, if I could.

KING EDWARD. But, if thou dost, what shall I say to thee?

WARWICK. What may be said to any perjured villain, That breaks the sacred warrant of an oath.

KING EDWARD.