Today's Stichomancy for L. Ron Hubbard

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson:

step, I will then make it; and if she cannot, I will not."

He leaped out of his chair like a man stung. "I can spy your manoeuvre," he cried; "you would work upon her to refuse!"

"Maybe ay, and maybe no," said I. "That is the way it is to be, whatever."

"And if I refuse?" cries he.

"Then, Mr. Drummond, it will have to come to the throat-cutting," said I.

What with the size of the man, his great length of arm in which he came near rivalling his father, and his reputed skill at weapons, I did not use this word without trepidation, to say nothing at all of the

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

put to himself when he sees such an appearance.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: To which he may guess the right answer, saying as if in a whisper to himself--'It is a man.'

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Or again, he may be misled, and then he will say--'No, it is a figure made by the shepherds.'

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if he has a companion, he repeats his thought to him in articulate sounds, and what was before an opinion, has now become a proposition.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris:

Sieppes had packed their last box and had strapped the last trunk. Trina's two trunks had already been sent to her new home--the remodelled photographer's rooms. The B Street house was deserted; the whole family came over to the city on the last day of May and stopped over night at one of the cheap downtown hotels. Trina would be married the following evening, and immediately after the wedding supper the Sieppes would leave for the South.

McTeague spent the day in a fever of agitation, frightened out of his wits each time that Old Grannis left his elbow.

Old Grannis was delighted beyond measure at the prospect of

McTeague

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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

"Oh, Amory, no!" cried Alec in horror. "That isn't the waythe bed requires different tacticslet the bed alone, as you value your reasonif there is a ghost in the room and that's only about a third of the time, it is almost always under the bed." "Well" Amory began. Alec waved him into silence. "Of course you never look. You stand in the middle of the floor and before he knows what you're going to do make a sudden leap for the bednever walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your most vulnerable partonce in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under the bed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you

This Side of Paradise