Today's Stichomancy for Joseph Stalin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay:

hand upon the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln stepped out upon the front platform and made the following brief and pathetic address. It was the last time his voice was to be heard in the city which had so long been his home:

"My Friends: No one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kindness of these people I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

long, long breath. One heavy volleying of foam,--darkness and hissing as of a steam-burst; a vibrant lifting up; a rush into light,--and again the volleying and the seething darkness. Once more,--and the fight is won! He feels the upcoming chill of deeper water,--sees before him the green quaking of unbroken swells,--and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the bar,--and beside him, almost within arm's reach, a great billiard-table swaying, and a dead woman clinging there, and ... the child.

A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ... How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is strong as death,--the desperate force of love! Not in vain; for

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

like a spot about as big as a pinhead. And in spite of all this, they demanded of him good likenesses and unconstrained naturalness. The men were no better: one insisted on being painted with an energetic, muscular turn to his head; another, with upturned, inspired eyes; a lieutenant of the guard demanded that Mars should be visible in his eyes; an official in the civil service drew himself up to his full height in order to have his uprightness expressed in his face, and that his hand might rest on a book bearing the words in plain characters, "He always stood up for the right."

At first such demands threw the artist into a cold perspiration. Finally he acquired the knack of it, and never troubled himself at all

Taras Bulba and Other Tales

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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

``Rain! Rain! Go to Spain! Rain! Rain! Go to Spain! Rain! Rain! Go to Spain!''

And all the little girls thought that was so beautiful that they began to beat all over the windows, too, just as high and just as far as their little damp pink fingers could reach, and to sing as loud and as gaily as they could sing:

``Rain! Rain!