Today's Stichomancy for Theodore Roosevelt

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf:

familiar to her. They trod their way through her mind as she sat opposite her mother of a morning at a table heaped with bundles of old letters and well supplied with pencils, scissors, bottles of gum, india-rubber bands, large envelopes, and other appliances for the manufacture of books. Shortly before Ralph Denham's visit, Katharine had resolved to try the effect of strict rules upon her mother's habits of literary composition. They were to be seated at their tables every morning at ten o'clock, with a clean-swept morning of empty, secluded hours before them. They were to keep their eyes fast upon the paper, and nothing was to tempt them to speech, save at the stroke of the hour when ten minutes for relaxation were to be allowed them. If

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton:

the stairs to bed, and a fierce revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a horrible old man....

The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other in silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse for their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royall rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help the old woman

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale:

Would you let me in when the gray wind blows? Would you hold your petals wide apart, Would you let me in to find your heart, If you were a rose?

"If I were a rose and you were a bee, You should never go when you came to me, I should hold my love on my heart at last, I should close my leaves and keep you fast, If you were a bee."

The Song Maker

I made a hundred little songs

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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare:

Which cunning love did wittily prevent: Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her! 472 For on the grass she lies as she were slain Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, 476 He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr'd: He kisses her; and she, by her good will, Will never rise, so he will kiss her still. 480

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day: