Today's Stichomancy for Richard Burton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister:

Germany, whose newspaper the Cologne Volkszettung deplored the doings of her Kultur on land and sea thus: "Much as we detest it as human beings and as Christians, yet we exult in it as Germans."

Agreeable Germany!--whose Kaiser, if his fleet had been larger, would have taken us by the scruff of the neck.

"Then Thou, Almighty One, send Thy lightnings! Let dwellings and cottages become ashes in the heat of fire. Let the people in hordes burn and drown with wife and child. May their seed be trampled under our feet; May we kill great and small in the lust of joy. May we plunge our daggers into their bodies,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas:

sapphire again; the one I mentioned to you had one of its faces scratched by accident."

D'Artagnan took off the ring, giving it again to Athos.

Athos started. "Look," said he, "is it not strange?" and he pointed out to D'Artagnan the scratch he had remembered.

"But from whom did this ring come to you, Athos?"

"From my mother, who inherited it from her mother. As I told you, it is an old family jewel."

"And you--sold it?" asked D'Artagnan, hesitatingly.

"No," replied Athos, with a singular smile. "I gave it away in a night of love, as it has been given to you."

The Three Musketeers

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair:

repent in dust and ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the beginning that he "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and "the fire of God" falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his servants, and "a great wind from the wilderness" kills his sons and daughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon caused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but mainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the diet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease, and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits among the

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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall:

and then his business income rose to 112L. From the end of 1845 to the day of his death, Faraday's annual professional business income was exactly zero. Taking the duration of his life into account, this son of a blacksmith, and apprentice to a bookbinder, had to decide between a fortune of 150,000L. on the one side, and his undowered science on the other. He chose the latter, and died a poor man. But his was the glory of holding aloft among the nations the scientific name of England for a period of forty years.

The outward and visible signs of fame were also of less account to him than to most men. He had been loaded with scientific honours from all parts of the world. Without, I imagine, a dissentient