Today's Stichomancy for Britney Spears

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith:

"The man what used to be at Quarantine seven years ago. He's app'inted ag'in."

Dempsey caught up his hat and hurriedly left the room, followed by Quigg and Crimmins. McGaw, he said to himself, as he ran downstairs, must be blind drunk, not to come to the meeting. "----him! What if he gives everything away!" he added aloud.

"This news is awful," said the president. "I am very sorry for Mrs. Grogan and her children--she was a fine woman. It is a serious matter, too, for the village. The highway work ought to commence at once; the roads need it. We may now have to advertise again. That would delay everything for a month."

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus:

this faculty:--

Quickly and wisely withal even bitter feuds would he settle.

Nevertheless the practice is not very safe at present, especially in Rome. One who adopts it, I need not say, ought not to carry it out in an obscure corner, but boldly accost, if occasion serve, some personage of rank or wealth.

"Can you tell me, sir, to whose care you entrust your horses?"

"I can."

"Is it to the first corner, who knows nothing about them?"

"Certainly not."

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

to cover that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run away in the darkness. But I am tired."

That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how dangerous the Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for those odds.

"I will go to the west wall," Kaa whispered, "and come down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds, but--"

"I know it," said Bagheera. "Would that Baloo were here, but

The Jungle Book

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 The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll:

"The fact of Desertion I will not dispute; But its guilt, as I trust, is removed (So far as related to the costs of this suit) By the Alibi which has been proved.

"My poor client's fate now depends on you votes." Here the speaker sat down in his place, And directed the Judge to refer to his notes And briefly to sum up the case.

But the Judge said he never had summed up before; So the Snark undertook it instead, And summed it so well that it came to far more

The Hunting of the Snark