Today's Stichomancy for John Glenn

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

those pleasures which accompany health and temperance, and which every Virtue, like a goddess, has in her train to follow her about wherever she goes,--mingle these and not the others; there would be great want of sense in any one who desires to see a fair and perfect mixture, and to find in it what is the highest good in man and in the universe, and to divine what is the true form of good--there would be great want of sense in his allowing the pleasures, which are always in the company of folly and vice, to mingle with mind in the cup.'--Is not this a very rational and suitable reply, which mind has made, both on her own behalf, as well as on the behalf of memory and true opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry:

was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.

Generations before, the name had been "Larsen." His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.

From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen des trois-quartz de monde, that pathetic spheroid lying between the haut

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke:

don't come faster than that we'll have another chance to show them how we make the light wink, eh?"

Then she went on with her song--

"Sautez, mignonne, Cecilia. Ah, ah, ah, ah, Cecilia!"

III

You did not suppose that was the end of the story, did you?

No, an out-of-doors story does not end like that, broken off in the middle, with a bit of a song. It goes on to something definite, like a wedding or a funeral.

You have not heard, yet, how near the light came to failing, and how

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 Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles:

MESSENGER This is he.

OEDIPUS And now old man, look up and answer all I ask thee. Wast thou once of Laius' house?

HERDSMAN I was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred.

OEDIPUS What was thy business? how wast thou employed?

HERDSMAN The best part of my life I tended sheep.

Oedipus Trilogy