Today's Stichomancy for David Letterman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther:

``Disputatio pro Declaratione Virtutis Indulgentiarum.'' by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546 D. MARTIN LUTHERS WERKE: KRITISCHE GESAMMTAUSGABE. 1. Band (Weimar: Hermann Boehlau, 1883). pp. 233-238. PW #001-001La

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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

You will thank me for looking some other way.

THE WINDMILL

Behold! a giant am I! Aloft here in my tower, With my granite jaws I devour The maize, and the wheat, and the rye, And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms; In the fields of grain I see The harvest that is to be, And I fling to the air my arms,

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

than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as when he explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write thus slobberingly;" or as in this incredible particularity, "To my study, where I only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this *, and so out again;" or lastly, as here, with more of circumstance: "I staid up till the bellman came by with his bell under my window, AS I WAS WRITING OF THIS VERY LINE, and cried, `Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning.'" Such passages are not to be misunderstood. The appeal to Samuel Pepys years hence is unmistakable. He desires that dear, though unknown,

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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

her to a ball, Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets in quietly and drives away to her high for- tune.

Captain Ellis (a fierce sort of fairy) had pro- duced a command out of a drawer almost as un- expectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is an abstract idea, and it seemed a sort of "lesser marvel" till it flashed upon me that it involved the concrete existence of a ship.

A ship! My ship! She was mine, more abso- lutely mine for possession and care than anything

The Shadow Line