Today's Stichomancy for Mick Jagger

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

Urging to restlessness: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune, from memory,-- But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed And found no resolution--only hung there, And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . . What secret dusty chamber was it hinting? 'Dust', it said, 'dust . . . and dust . . . and sunlight . . A cold clear April evening . . . snow, bedraggled, Rain-worn snow, dappling the hideous grass . . . And someone walking alone; and someone saying That all must end, for the time had come to go . . . '

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac:

in the face at the Prefecture, I made Georges blab."

"I should like very much to know who it is that has stolen a march on me," said Peyrade. "We would measure our spurs!"

"We must play eavesdropper," said Contenson.

"He is right," said Peyrade. "We must get into chinks to listen, and wait----"

"We will study that side of the subject," cried Corentin. "For the present, I am out of work. You, Peyrade, be a very good boy. We must always obey Monsieur le Prefet!"

"Monsieur de Nucingen wants bleeding," said Contenson; "he has too many banknotes in his veins."

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

and white, as they played. Thus, of his own accord, he had begun to watch them when a child of six; and the Padre had taken the wild, half-scared, spellbound creature and made a musician of him.

"There, Felipe!" he said now. "Can you do it? Slower, and more softly, muchacho mio. It is about the death of a man, and it should go with our bell."

The boy listened. "Then the father has played it a tone too low," said he, "for our bell rings the note of sol, or something very near it, as the father must surely know." He placed the melody in the right key--an easy thing for him; and the Padre was delighted.

"Ah, my Felipe," he exclaimed, "what could you and I not do if we had a

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 Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay:

soldiers, for the South had raised a mighty outcry against the Emancipation Proclamation, especially against the use of the freed slaves as soldiers, vowing that white officers of negro troops would be shown small mercy, if ever they were taken prisoners. No act of such vengeance occurred, but in 1864 a fort manned by colored soldiers was captured by the Confederates, and almost the entire garrison was put to death. Must the order that the War Department had issued some time earlier, to offset the Confederate threats, now be put in force? The order said that for every negro prisoner killed by the Confederates a Confederate prisoner in the hands of the Union armies would be taken out and