Today's Stichomancy for Leo Tolstoy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie:

be born also, but John said brutally that they did not want any more.

Michael had nearly cried. "Nobody wants me," he said, and of course the lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.

"I do," she said, "I so want a third child."

"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hopefully.

"Boy."

Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be Michael's last night in the nursery.

They go on with their recollections.

Peter Pan

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes:

merited compliment.)

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion."

And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Kircher on her part was not less frank in her survey of the little old woman. It was the latter who spoke first. In a thin, cracked voice she spoke, hesitatingly, falteringly, as though she were using unfamiliar words and speaking a strange tongue.

"You are from the outer world?" she asked in English. "God grant that you may speak and understand this tongue."

"English?" the girl exclaimed, "Yes, of course, I speak Eng- lish."

"Thank God!" cried the little old woman. "I did not know whether I myself might speak it so that another could under- stand. For sixty years I have spoken only their accursed

Tarzan the Untamed

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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon:

heavy shield of bronze; his theory being that such an equipment has no sort of feminine association, and is altogether most warrior-like.[4] It is most quickly burnished; it is least readily soiled.[5]

[4] Cf. Aristoph. "Acharn." 320, and the note of the scholiast.

[5] See Ps. Plut. "Moral." 238 F.

He futher permitted those who were above the age of early manhood to wear their hair long.[6] For so, he conceived, they would appear of larger stature, more free and indomitable, and of a more terrible aspect.

[6] See Plut. "Lycurg." 22 (Clough, i. 114).

So furnished and accoutred, he divided his citizen soldiers into six