Today's Stichomancy for Nelson Mandela

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe:

reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind - as if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil will or an evil eye, that, as they say in the case of a mad dog, who though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human nature, who cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own

A Journal of the Plague Year

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

GERALD. Still, there are many different kinds of women, aren't there?

LORD ILLINGWORTH. Only two kinds in society: the plain and the coloured.

GERALD. But there are good women in society, aren't there?

LORD ILLINGWORTH. Far too many.

GERALD. But do you think women shouldn't be good?

LORD ILLINGWORTH. One should never tell them so, they'd all become good at once. Women are a fascinatingly wilful sex. Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

GERALD. You have never been married, Lord Illingworth, have you?

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

coming rapidly. I seized her arm and drew her after me behind a nearby tree, for I had seen that with both their comrades down the others were preparing to launch their spears.

With the girl safe behind the tree, I stepped out in sight of the advancing foe, shouting to them that I was no enemy, and that they should halt and listen to me. But for answer they only yelled in derision and launched a couple of spears at me, both of which missed.

I saw then that I must fight, yet still I hated to slay them, and it was only as a final resort that I dropped two

Lost Continent

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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson:

"I wouldna like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I think the birds would carry news of it to Gilbert," and she smiled. "It's about the Elliotts," she continued, "and I think there's few bonnier bits in the book-poets, though Dand has never got printed yet."

And she began, in the low, clear tones of her half voice, now sinking almost to a whisper, now rising to a particular note which was her best, and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion:-

"O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, In the rain and the wind and the lave, They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill, But they're a' quaitit noo in the grave.