Today's Stichomancy for George Armstrong Custer

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic:

will of Heaven which looks upward in the hour of trial, not doubting that the all-wise God knows best what is for the good of his children. If she believed that misfortunes were all for the best, it was only an impulse derived from the story of her father; a kind of philosophy which was very convenient for the evil day, because it permitted the sufferer to lie down and take things easily. It was not a filial trust in the wisdom and mercy of the heavenly Father that sustained her as the clouds grew thicker and blacker around her; it was only a cold indifference, a feeling of the head rather than the heart.

But Mrs. Redburn had been reading the New Testament during Katy's

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne:

nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going troking across a continent on a wild-goose chase. In this situation, which I am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, to begin with, eighteen shillings a week."

"Eighteen shillings a week!" I cried. "Why, my poor friend gave me more than that for nothing!"

"And I think it is this very friend you are now trying to repay?" observed my uncle, with an air of one advancing a strong argument.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

On streets and fields and harbour quays, And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse, The howling dog by the door of the house, The bat that lies in bed at noon, All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way; And flowers and children close their eyes Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

XXXIII

A Child's Garden of Verses

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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

If they declined the proposal, why then the refusal cost nothing, But if all prosper'd, why then the suitor for ever thereafter Play'd the first fiddle at every family feast and rejoicing. For the married couple remember'd the whole of their lifetime Whose was the skilful hand by which the marriage knot tied was. All this now is chang'd, and with many an excellent custom Has gone quite out of fashion. Each person woos for himself now. Everyone now must bear the weight of a maiden's refusal On his own shoulders, and stand all ashamed before her, if needs be."

"Let that be as it may," then answered the young man who scarcely Heard what was said, and his mind had made up already in silence