Today's Stichomancy for Richard Branson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

CHAPTER XIV

For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the Schneeberg sulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony of the Pension Waldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and there by islands that were crags or by the tops of sunken masts that were evergreen trees. The roads were masses of slippery mud, up which the horses steamed and sweated. The gray cloud fog hung over everything; the barking of a dog loomed out of it near at hand where no dog was to be seen. Children cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not.

During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Till by danger 'tis stirr'd, and till necessity makes man Show himself as an angel, a tutelar God unto others."

Then with a smile replied the worthy old magistrate, saying "Your reminder is wise, like that which they give to the suff'rer Who has had his dwelling burnt down, that under the ruins, Gold and silver are lying, though melted and cover'd with ashes. Little, indeed, it may be, and yet that little is precious, And the poor man digs it up, and rejoices at finding the treasure. Gladly, therefore, I turn my thoughts to those few worthy actions Which my memory still is able to dwell on with pleasure. Yes, I will not deny it, I saw late foemen uniting

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde:

JACK. You are certainly not staying with me for a whole week as a guest or anything else. You have got to leave . . . by the four- five train.

ALGERNON. I certainly won't leave you so long as you are in mourning. It would be most unfriendly. If I were in mourning you would stay with me, I suppose. I should think it very unkind if you didn't.

JACK. Well, will you go if I change my clothes?

ALGERNON. Yes, if you are not too long. I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

JACK. Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-

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 The Sportsman by Xenophon:

some must be assigned no doubt to want of scientific training. In either case such hounds are useless, and may well deter the keenest sportsman from the hunting field.[32]

[32] Or, "Naturally, dogs like these damp the sportsman's ardour, and indeed are enough to sicken him altogether with the chase."

The characters, bodily and other, exhibited by the finer specimens of the same breed,[33] I will now set forth.

[33] Or, "The features, points, qualities, whether physical or other, which characterise the better indidivuals." But what does Xenophon mean by {tou autou genous}?