Today's Stichomancy for Yasser Arafat

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne:

see what you mean,' he added. 'My real name is Herrick. No more Hay'--they had both used the same alias--'no more Hay than yours, I dare say.'

'Clean bowled in the middle stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My name's 'Uish if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme in the Pacific. Lay you five to three the captain 'as.'

'So I have too,' replied the captain; 'and I've never told my own since the day I tore the title page out of my Bowditch and flung the damned thing into the sea. But I'll tell it to you, boys. John Davis is my name. I'm Davis of the Sea Ranger.'

'Dooce you are!' said Hush. 'And what was she? a pirate or a

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad:

murmured gently. "No, Excellentissima, I shall go through life without as much as a switch in my hand. It's no use you being angry. Adapting to this great moment some words you've heard before: I am like that. Such is my character!"

Dona Rita frankly stared at me - a most unusual expression for her to have. Suddenly she sat up.

"Don George," she said with lovely animation, "I insist upon knowing who is in my house."

"You insist! . . . But Therese says it is her house."

Had there been anything handy, such as a cigarette box, for instance, it would have gone sailing through the air spouting

The Arrow of Gold

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

husband to take a large apartment in the ground-floor of a house at the corner of the Vieille Rue du Temple and the Rue Nueve Saint- Francois. Her chief reason for this choice was that the house was close to the Rue d'Orleans, where there was a church, and not far from a small chapel in the Rue Saint-Louis.

"A good housewife provides for everything," said her husband, laughing.

Angelique pointed out to him that this part of Paris, known as the Marais, was within easy reach of the Palais de Justice, and that the lawyers they knew lived in the neighborhood. A fairly large garden made the apartment particularly advantageous to a young couple; the

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 When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

she turned to me. "Go to your room at once!" she said in her most awful tone. "Go to your room and leave this--this shocking affair to me."

But if she had reached her limit, so had I. If Jim chose to ruin himself, it was not my fault. Any one with common sense would have known at least to close the door before he went down on his knees, no matter to whom. So when Aunt Selina turned on me and pointed in the direction of the staircase, I did not move.

"I am perfectly wide awake," I said coldly. "I shall go to bed when I am entirely ready, and not before. And as for Jim's conduct, I do not know much about the conventions in such cases,