Today's Stichomancy for Margaret Thatcher

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp:

and there you are discovered sitting on your sofa and looking for all the world as though you had been expecting visitors for hours.

"Pray, does he wear pyjamas?" I inquired.

But she had never heard of pyjamas.

It takes a long time to make my spring lists. I want to have a border all yellow, every shade of yellow from fieriest orange to nearly white, and the amount of work and studying of gardening books it costs me will only be appreciated by beginners like myself. I have been weeks planning it, and it is not nearly finished. I want it to be a succession of glories from May till the frosts,

Elizabeth and her German Garden

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

there are not so many of us, and my friend Eudicus bids me ask, I wish you would tell me what you were saying about these two heroes, so that I may clearly understand; how did you distinguish them?

HIPPIAS: I shall have much pleasure, Socrates, in explaining to you more clearly than I could in public my views about these and also about other heroes. I say that Homer intended Achilles to be the bravest of the men who went to Troy, Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the wiliest.

SOCRATES: O rare Hippias, will you be so good as not to laugh, if I find a difficulty in following you, and repeat my questions several times over? Please to answer me kindly and gently.

HIPPIAS: I should be greatly ashamed of myself, Socrates, if I, who teach

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen:

the chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his poverty for a great fortune. His father had been near enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and

The Great God Pan

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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson:

cheek by jowl. The children quarrel; Jockie hits Jimsie in the eye, and the mothers make haste to mingle in the dissension. Perhaps there is trouble about a broken dish; perhaps Mrs. Assistant is more highly born than Mrs. Principal and gives herself airs; and the men are drawn in and the servants presently follow. `Church privileges have been denied the keeper's and the assistant's servants,' I read in one case, and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither more nor less than excommunication, `on account of the discordant and quarrelsome state of the families. The cause, when inquired into, proves to be TITTLE-TATTLE on both sides.'