Today's Stichomancy for Mitt Romney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac:

"It may be only natural," said Bixiou. "One-third of all the lorettes, one-fourth of all the statesmen, and one-half of all artists consult Madame Fontaine; and I know a minister to whom she is an Egeria."

"Did she tell you about your future?" asked Leon.

"No; I had enough of her about my past. But," added Gazonal, struck by a sudden thought, "if she can, by the help of those dreadful collaborators, predict the future, how came she to lose in the lottery?"

"Ah! you put your finger on one of the greatest mysteries of occult science," replied Leon. "The moment that the species of inward mirror on which the past or the future is reflected to their minds become

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson:

possible in art; not even the ingenuity of nature could so round in the actual life of any man. And yet it might almost seem to fancy that she had read the letter and taken the hint; for to Fleeming the cruelties of fate were strangely blended with tenderness, and when death came, it came harshly to others, to him not unkindly.

In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleeming's father and mother were walking in the garden of their house at Merchiston, when the latter fell to the ground. It was thought at the time to be a stumble; it was in all likelihood a premonitory stroke of palsy. From that day, there fell upon her an abiding panic fear; that glib, superficial part of us that speaks and reasons could allege

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London:

is not yet manufactured that will explode that charge. It's only a bottle of chlorodyne."

She put her fingers into her mouth, and Sheldon winced as he saw her blow, like a boy, a sharp, imperious whistle--the call she always used for her sailors, and that always made him wince.

"They're gone up the Balesuna, shooting fish," he explained. "But there comes Oleson with his boat's-crew. He's an old war-horse when he gets started. See him banging the boys. They don't pull fast enough for him."

"And now what's to be done?" she asked. "You've treed your game, but you can't keep it treed."

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 Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton:

and she made a slight involuntary motion toward him, her lips trembling apart.

"Nothing," she murmured. "I do not know--I do not know. But I no longer wish her near me. She--life is very strange and terrible, senor. You know it well--I, so little."

Rezanov felt his breath short and his hands cold. For a moment he made no reply. Then he smiled charmingly and said in the conventional tone that was ever at his command: "Of course you know little of life in this Arcadia. One who hopes to be

Rezanov