Today's Stichomancy for Elvis Presley

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac:

ecclesiastical idiot. The principal thing for you is to enjoy yourself; my sweet carcass, a thing accessory. Your pleasure will be my death, and then you'll canonise me perhaps? Ah, you have the plague, and you would give it to me. Go somewhere else, you brainless priest. Ah! touch me not," said she, seeing him about to advance, "or I will stab you with this dagger."

And the clever hussy drew from her armoire a little dagger, which she knew how to use with great skill when necessary.

"But my little paradise, my sweet one," said the other, laughing, "don't you see the trick? Wasn't it necessary to be get rid of that old bullock of Coire?"

Droll Stories, V. 1

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness. The wagon jolted along over the frozen road. The two friends had less to say to each other

O Pioneers!

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

evening. I don't know why. It is not her sea- son, of course. Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pond is full of strange voices every night." Alexandra translated for Carl, who looked thoughtful. "Ask him, Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heard so." She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.

O Pioneers!

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 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass:

himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker com- plexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend. Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless in consequence of a knowl- edge of this fact, that one great statesman of the

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave