Today's Stichomancy for Bill Gates

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw:

BENTLEY. You are full of beef today, old man.

TARLETON. Beef be blowed! Joy of life. Read Ibsen. _[He goes into the pavilion to relieve his restlessness, and stares out with his hands thrust deep in his pockets]._

HYPATIA. _[thoughtful]_ Bentley: couldnt you invite your friend Mr Percival down here?

BENTLEY. Not if I know it. Youd throw me over the moment you set eyes on him.

MRS TARLETON. Oh, Bunny! For shame!

BENTLEY. Well, who'd marry me, dyou suppose, if they could get my brains with a full-sized body? No, thank you. I shall take jolly

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon:

money, even for the sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment is held to lie not in the costliness of the clothes they wear, but in the healthy condition of the body to be clothed? Nor again could there be much inducement to amass wealth, in order to be able to expend it on the members of a common mess, where the legislator had made it seem far more glorious that a man should help his fellows by the labour of his body than by costly outlay. The latter being, as he finely phrased it, the function of wealth, the former an activity of the soul.

[1] See Plut. "Lycurg." 10 (Clough, i. 96).

He went a step further, and set up a strong barrier (even in a society

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson:

he.

"It was the most deliberate act of my life," says Mr. Henry.

"I must have blood, I must have blood for this," says the Master.

"Please God it shall be yours," said Mr. Henry; and he went to the wall and took down a pair of swords that hung there with others, naked. These he presented to the Master by the points. "Mackellar shall see us play fair," said Mr. Henry. "I think it very needful."

"You need insult me no more," said the Master, taking one of the swords at random. "I have hated you all my life."

"My father is but newly gone to bed," said Mr. Henry. "We must go

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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

them, and then it was an easy thing for Tattine to reach in and draw out the prettiest puppy of all.

"Why didn't you tell us there were five, Betsy, and save us all this extra trouble?" and Tattine hurried away to deposit number five in the kennel; but Betsy looked up with the most reproachful look imaginable as though to say, "How much talking could you do if you had to do it all with your eyes and a tail?"

CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES

Patrick Kirk was raking the gravel on the road into pretty criss-cross patterns, and Tattine was pretending to help him with her own garden rake. Patrick was one of Tattine's best friends and she loved to work with him and