Today's Stichomancy for Phil Mickelson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton:

slowly, and as he leaned back, gazing with absent intentness at the deserted paths that wound under bare boughs between grass banks of premature vividness, his attention was arrested by two figures walking ahead of him. This couple, who had the path to themselves,moved at an uneven pace, as though adapting their gait to a conversation marked by meditative intervals. Now and then they paused, and in one of these pauses the lady, turning toward her companion, showed Glennard the outline of his wife's profile. The man was Flamel.

The blood rushed to Glennard's forehead. He sat up with a jerk and pushed back the lid in the roof of the hansom; but when the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe:

least appearance, not only on or near the shore, but on the whole ocean, so far as my eye or glass could reach every way.

As long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their

Robinson Crusoe

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac:

longed to question that gloomy spirit. Had Madeleine kept her thoughts to herself, or had she inspired Jacques with her hatred?

"You know, Jacques," I said, to begin the conversation, "that in me you have a most devoted brother."

"Your friendship is useless to me; I shall follow my mother," he said, giving me a sullen look of pain.

"Jacques!" I cried, "you, too, against me?"

He coughed and walked away; when he returned he showed me his handkerchief stained with blood.

"Do you understand that?" he said.

Thus they had each of them a fatal secret. I saw before long that the

The Lily of the Valley

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 Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman:

large as a fair-sized pea. I took up the three, and rose to my feet again, the light in one hand, the crystals in the palm of the other.

They were diamonds! Diamonds of price! I knew it in a moment. As I moved the taper to and fro above them, and watched the fire glow and tremble in their depths, I knew that I held in my hand that which would buy the crazy inn and all its contents a dozen times over! They were diamonds! Gems so fine, and of so rare a water--or I had never seen gems--that my hand trembled as I held them, and my head grew hot and my heart beat furiously.