Today's Stichomancy for Franklin Roosevelt

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland:

the most exacting social duties. Few American ladies in the whirl of society in Washington or New York have more social functions to attend or duties to perform. I have often been present in the evening when the head eunuch brought to the ruling lady of the home (and the head of the home in China is the woman, not the man) an ebony tablet on which was written in red ink the list of social functions the ladies were to attend the following day.

She would select from the list such as she and her unmarried daughters could attend,--the daughters always going with their mother and not with their sisters-in-law,--then she would apportion the other engagements to her daughters-in-law, who

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac:

drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface myself in these poor people's merry-making.

The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps with tin reflectors. A row of wooden benches ran round the walls, which were black with grime to the height of the tables. Here some eighty persons, all in their Sunday best, tricked out with ribbons and bunches of flowers, all of them on pleasure bent, were dancing away with heated visages as if the world were about to come to an end.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac:

(Imagine how her words had run away with her.)--'Yes, indeed, we are born to suffer. In matters of passion we are always superior to you, and you are beneath all loyalty. There is no honesty in your hearts. To you love is a game in which you always cheat.'--'My dear,' said I, 'to take anything serious in society nowadays would be like making romantic love to an actress.'--'What a shameless betrayal! It was deliberately planned!'--'No, only a rational issue.'--'Good-bye, Monsieur de Marsay,' said she; 'you have deceived me horribly.'-- 'Surely,' I replied, taking up a submissive attitude, 'Madame la Duchesse will not remember Charlotte's grievances?'--'Certainly,' she answered bitterly.--'Then, in fact, you hate me?'--She bowed, and I

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 Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville:

applied.

Some years ago several pious individuals undertook to ameliorate the condition of the prisons. The public was excited by the statements which they put forward, and the regeneration of criminals became a very popular undertaking. New prisons were built, and for the first time the idea of reforming as well as of punishing the delinquent formed a part of prison discipline. But this happy alteration, in which the public had taken so hearty an interest, and which the exertions of the citizens had irresistibly accelerated, could not be completed in a moment. Whilst the new penitentiaries were being erected (and it was the