Today's Stichomancy for Chuck Yeager

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

sometimes on the outskirts of a little Hindu village, where the children would steal up with the food their parents had prepared; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare grazing- grounds, where the flame of his stick fire waked the drowsy camels. It was all one to Purun Dass--or Purun Bhagat, as he called himself now. Earth, people, and food were all one. But unconsciously his feet drew him away northward and eastward; from the south to Rohtak; from Rohtak to Kurnool; from Kurnool to ruined Samanah, and then up-stream along the dried bed of the Gugger river that fills only when the rain falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line of the great Himalayas.

The Second Jungle Book

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

That I shall come safe through the dangers I'm dreading; That even the scoffer shall turn from his ways And some day be won back to trust and to praise; That the leaf on the tree and the thing we call Man Are sharing alike in His infinite plan.

I believe that all things that are living and breathing Some richness of beauty to earth are bequeath-

A Heap O' Livin'

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot:

And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed: "Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners.

Prufrock/Other Observations

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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac:

to receive a handsome salary. He had the good sense to hold his tongue about the favor with which he was honored, and knew how to entertain the monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. delighted as much as in a well-written note, by his brilliant manner of repeating political anecdotes, and the political or parliamentary tittle-tattle --if the expression may pass--which at that time was rife. It is well known that he was immensely amused by every detail of his Gouvernementabilite--a word adopted by his facetious Majesty.

Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine's good sense, wit, and tact, every member of his numerous family, however young, ended, as he jestingly told his Sovereign, in attaching himself like a silkworm to the leaves