Today's Stichomancy for Madonna

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue turban. The old Mugger sees and hears. Each calls the other "Brother," and they go to mark out the boundaries of the new land. The Mugger hurries with them from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. Now they begin to quarrel! Now they say hot words! Now they pull turbans! Now they lift up their lathis (clubs), and, at last, one falls backward into the mud, and the other runs away. When he comes back the dispute is settled, as the iron-bound bamboo of the loser witnesses. Yet they are not grateful to the Mugger. No, they cry "Murder!" and their families fight with sticks, twenty a-side. My people are good

The Second Jungle Book

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James:

"So that they can't marry?"

The young man waited a moment. "Not being able to marry is all they've with any confidence to look forward to. A woman--a particular woman--may stand that strain. But can a man?" he propounded.

Strether's answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself, worked it out. "Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that's just what we're attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter," he mused, "does his going to America diminish the particular strain? Wouldn't it seem rather to add to it?"

"Out of sight out of mind!" his companion laughed. Then more

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis:

around, and do it right away. But it looked to me like he might never turn the trick. Fur he was drinking right smart all the time. Drinking made him think a lot, and thinking was making him look old. He was more'n one year older than he had been a year ago.

He kept a quart bottle in his room now. The night after we had took Sam to see Doctor Jackson we was setting in his room, and he was hitting it purty hard.

"Danny," he says to me, after a while, like he

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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

"Parties are very confusing," philosophized Hope,--"especially when waiters and partners dress so much alike. Just now I saw an ill-looking man elbowing his way up to Mrs. Meredith, and I thought he was bringing her something on a plate. Instead of that, it was his hand he held out, and she put hers into it; and I was told that he was one of the leaders of society. There are very few gentlemen here whom I could positively tell from the waiters by their faces, and yet Harry says the fast set are not here."

"Talk of the angels!" said Philip. "There come the Inglesides."