Today's Stichomancy for Fidel Castro

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

"I didn't know but what...folks here say she's engaged to Mr. Harney."

Charity stood up with a laugh, and stretched her arms lazily above her head.

"If all the people got married that folks say are going to you'd have your time full making wedding- dresses," she said ironically.

"Why--don't you believe it?" Ally ventured.

"It would not make it true if I did--nor prevent it if I didn't."

"That's so....I only know I seen her crying the night

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac:

disappeared under the purple archway of that preposterous nose, and left their dregs on his lips. Long and slow digestion had destroyed his teeth. His eyes had grown dim under the lamps of the gaming table. The blood tainted with impurities had vitiated the nervous system. The expenditure of force in the task of digestion had undermined his intellect. Finally, amours had thinned his hair. Each vice, like a greedy heir, had stamped possession on some part of the living body.

Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had placed this man by the side of this rose of love.

"Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?" asked the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

When Juno to her handmaid gives command,

(The one without born of the one within, Like to the speaking of that vagrant one Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours,)

And make the people here, through covenant God set with Noah, presageful of the world That shall no more be covered with a flood,

In such wise of those sempiternal roses The garlands twain encompassed us about, And thus the outer to the inner answered.

After the dance, and other grand rejoicings,

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau:

"When he came to grene wode, In a mery mornynge, There he herde the notes small Of byrdes mery syngynge.

"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, That I was last here; Me Lyste a lytell for to shote At the donne dere."

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than that--sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields,

Walking