Today's Stichomancy for Jack Kerouac

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Critias by Plato:

it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea: these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals.

As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

and bending trunks.

Now and again some ancient patriarch of the woods, rent by a flashing bolt, would crash in a thousand pieces among the surrounding trees, carrying down numberless branches and many smaller neighbors to add to the tangled confusion of the tropical jungle.

Branches, great and small, torn away by the ferocity of the tornado, hurtled through the wildly waving verdure, carrying death and destruction to countless unhappy denizens of the thickly peopled world below.

For hours the fury of the storm continued without surcease,

Tarzan of the Apes

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft:

introduced, as a general rule. I have sometimes quite an acquaintance with a person, and exchange visits, and yet do not succeed for a long time in putting their name and the person together. . . . It is a great puzzle to a stranger, but has its conveniences for the English themselves. We are endeavoring to become acquainted with the English mind, not only through society, but through its products in other ways. Natural science is the department into which they seem to have thrown their intellect most effectively for the last ten or fifteen years. We are reading Whewell's "History of the Inductive Sciences," which gives one a summary of what has been accomplished in that way, not only in past

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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield:

stewardess came to meet them. She was dressed all in blue, and her collar and cuffs were fastened with large brass buttons. She seemed to know grandma well.

"Well, Mrs. Crane," said she, unlocking their washstand. "We've got you back again. It's not often you give yourself a cabin."

"No," said grandma. "But this time my dear son's thoughtfulness--"

"I hope--" began the stewardess. Then she turned round and took a long, mournful look at grandma's blackness and at Fenella's black coat and skirt, black blouse, and hat with a crape rose.

Grandma nodded. "It was God's will," said she.

The stewardess shut her lips and, taking a deep breath, she seemed to