Today's Stichomancy for Dick Cheney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell:

18 Going for the Doctor 19 Only Ignorance 20 Joe Green 21 The Parting

Part II

22 Earlshall 23 A Strike for Liberty 24 The Lady Anne, or a Runaway Horse 25 Reuben Smith 26 How it Ended 27 Ruined and Going Downhill

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton:

There be such store of this fish in the river Danube, that Rondeletius says they may, in some places of it, and in some months of the year, be taken, by those who dwell near to the river, with their hands, eight or ten load at a time. He says, they begin to be good in May, and that they cease to be so in August: but it is found to be otherwise in this nation. But thus far we agree with him, that the spawn of a Barbel, if it be not poison, as he says, yet that it is dangerous meat, and especially in the month of May, which is so certain, that Gesner and Gasius declare it had an ill effect upon them, even to the endangering of their lives.

The fish is of a fine cast and handsome shape, with small scales, which are placed after a most exact and curious manner, and, as I told you,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot:

have to provide for calling customers, my dear!"--here Mrs. Mawmsey turned to an intimate female friend who sat by--"a large veal pie-- a stuffed fillet--a round of beef--ham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera! But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not the brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with your experience, you could have patience to listen. I should have told him at once that I knew a little better than that."

"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him my opinion. Hear everything and judge for yourself is my motto. But he didn't know who he was talking to. I was not to be turned on HIS finger. People often pretend to tell me things, when they

Middlemarch

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 Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

manger.

Whatever Jean's anxieties had been fell from him as he pushed open the door. Henri's voice was the first thing they heard. He was too much occupied to notice their approach.

So it was that Sara Lee saw, for the last time, the miller and his son, Maurice; saw them, but did not know them, for over their heads were bags of their own sacking, with eyeholes roughly cut in them. Their hands were bound, and three soldiers were waiting to take them away.

"I have covered your heads," Henri was saying in French, "because it is not well that our brave Belgians should know that they have been betrayed by those of their own number."