Today's Stichomancy for William T. Sherman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The American by Henry James:

Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was necessary, and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep, but he sat motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have envied him his apparent slumber. Toward morning slumber really came, as an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon:

want of protection just at the most vital point.

[6] {prosthetai}, "moveable," "false." For {gigglumois} L. & S. cf. Hipp. 411. 12; Aristot. "de An." iii. 10. 9 = "ball-and-socket joints."

[7] i.e. "forearm."

Moreover, as any damage done to the horse will involve his rider in extreme peril, the horse also should be clad in armour--frontlet, breastplate, and thigh-pieces;[8] which latter may at the same time serve as cuisses for the mounted man. Beyond all else, the horse's belly, being the most vital and defenceless part, should be protected. It is possible to protect it with the saddle-cloth. The saddle itself

On Horsemanship

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson:

perhaps I should rather say (in stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a story conceived long before on the moors between Pitlochry and Strathardle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bog- plants, and with a mind full of the Athole correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago, so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer.

My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, India, and America being all obligatory scenes. But of these India was strange to me except in books; I had never known any living

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 Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling:

as my father was slain. Yet if thou canst keep the roof on the hall, the thatch on the barn, and the plough in the furrow till I come back, thou shalt hold the Manor from me; for the Duke has promised our Earl Mortain all the lands by Pevensey, and Mortain will give me of them what he would have given my father. God knows if thou or I shall live till England is won; but remember, boy, that here and now fighting is foolishness and" - he reached for the reins - "craft and cunning is all."

"'Alas, I have no cunning," said I.

"'Not yet," said he, hopping abroad, foot in stirrup,