Today's Stichomancy for Jesse James

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rig Veda:

Indra with wondrous powers subdued the Dragon, the guileful lurker who beset the waters.

7 Thou, Maghavan, from the first didst scatter foemen, speeding, while joying in the milk, the Giver. There, seeking man's prosperity, thou torest away the head of Namuci the Dasa.

8 Pounding the head of Namuci the Dasa, me, too thou madest thine

The Rig Veda

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest:

I love her. She is good and sweet But still my joy is incomplete. And then it seems to me that she Can only see the faults in me. I wonder sometimes if we had A little girl or little lad, If life with all its fret and fuss Would then seem so monotonous?"

And what I'd say to them I know. I'd bid them straightway forth to go And find that child and take him in

Just Folks

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White:

belonged to Wes.

Jenny also was white and belonged to Wes. Her chief characteristic was her devotion to Dinkey. She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her enthusiastically. Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a very good and sure pack-horse. The deceiving part about Jenny was her eye. It was baleful with the spirit of evil,--snaky and black, and with green sideways gleams in it. Catching the flash of it, you would forever after avoid getting in range of her heels or teeth. But it was all a delusion. Jenny's

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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

as imperfect as his morals, and who needed nothing to make him a millionnaire but a turn of bad luck for somebody else. Half the men in the room would have felt quite ill at ease in any circle of refined women, but there was not one who did not feel perfectly unembarrassed around Mrs. Ingleside's board.

"Upon my word," thought Malbone, "I never fancied the English after-dinner practice, any more than did Napoleon. But if this goes on, it is the gentlemen who ought to withdraw. Cannot somebody lead the way to the drawing-room, and leave the ladies to finish their cigars?"

Till now he had hardly dared to look at Emilia. He saw with a