Today's Stichomancy for Peter Gabriel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson:

KIRK [a crowded church] and a great sermon. You may mention, with my compliments to my mother, that I was at St. Paul's to- day, and attended a very excellent service with Mr. James Lawrie. The text was "Examine and see that ye be in the faith." '

A twinkle of humour lights up this evocation of the distant scene - the humour of happy men and happy homes. Yet it is penned upon the threshold of fresh sorrow. James and Mary - he of the verse and she of the hymn - did not much more than survive to welcome their returning father. On the 25th, one of the godly women writes to Janet:

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx:

"National," passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the "Journal des Debats." This position in the constitutional monarchy corresponded to its character. The party was not a fraction of the bourgeoisie, held together by great and common interests, and marked by special business requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with republican ideas-writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose influence rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis Philippe, upon reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican faith of a number of enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of French patriotism, whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna and of the alliance with England kept them perpetually on the alert. The

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine:

itched at the fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.

The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident

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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

knew without feeling it. She did not have to feel it as she had felt the dress.

Bessie Bell looked and thought. She thought this lady looked like a Sister--and yet there was a difference. She looked also like Just- A-Lady, and she also looked grand and important enough for a Mama.

Bessie Bell looked and thought, but she could not tell just exactly what this lady was.

It was best that she should ask, and then she would surely know.

So she asked: ``Are vou a Lady, ma'am?''

``I hope so, little girl,'' the lady said.

``I thought, maybe, you were a Sister,'' said Bessie Bell.