Today's Stichomancy for George S. Patton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

that way, but Lord -- there!" "What?" "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He's been courted by sixes and sevens -- all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of new clothes; but Lord -- the money might as well have been thrown out of the window."

Far From the Madding Crowd

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

carriage, except a large roll of blue and white, as Eudora emerged from the yard and closed the iron gate of the tall fence behind her.

Through this fence pricked the evergreen box, and the deep yard was full of soft pastel tints of reluctantly budding trees and bushes. There was one deep splash of color from a yellow bush in full bloom.

Eudora paced down the sidewalk with a magnificent, stately gait. There was something rather magnificent in her whole appearance. Her skirts of old, but rich, black fabric swept about her long, advancing limbs; she held her black-bonneted head high, as if

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells:

disharmonies. . . .

"To modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of science.

"If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion of the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And if it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith alone, the faith must be in the power of science."

Now this, after all the flat repudiations that have preceded it of "religion" and "philosophy" as remedies for human ills, is nothing

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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp:

The April baby's eyes opened wider and wider, and her face grew redder and redder. I was surprised at the breathless interest she took in the story-- the other two were tearing up tufts of grass and hardly listening. I had scarcely got to the angels with the flaming swords and announced that that was all, when she burst out, "Now I'll tell about it. Once upon a time there was Adam and Eva, and they had plenty of clothes, and there was no snake, and lieber Gott wasn't angry with them, and they could eat as many apples as they liked, and was happy for ever and ever--there now!"

She began to jump up and down defiantly on my knee.

"But that's not the story," I said rather helplessly. <54>

Elizabeth and her German Garden