Today's Stichomancy for Ringo Starr

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon:

and another towards his foes. By turning night into day and day into night[6] he drew so close a veil of mystery over his movements that frequently there was no saying where he was, or whither he would go, or what he might do next. The fastnesses of the enemy he transformed into so many weaknesses,[7] passing this one by, and scaling that, and stealing like a thief into a third.

[6] See "Hell." VI. i. 15; "Pol. Lac." v. 7; "Cyrop." I. v. 12.

[7] Or, "the strongholds of the enemy might to all intents and purposes have been open places."

When he was on the march, and was well aware that an enemy might, if he chose, deliver battle, his habit was to lead his troops in compact

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James:

He wants to stay at the hotel. Mother's afraid to leave him alone, and the courier won't stay with him; so we haven't been to many places. But it will be too bad if we don't go up there." And Miss Miller pointed again at the Chateau de Chillon.

"I should think it might be arranged," said Winterbourne. "Couldn't you get some one to stay for the afternoon with Randolph?"

Miss Miller looked at him a moment, and then, very placidly, "I wish YOU would stay with him!" she said.

Winterbourne hesitated a moment. "I should much rather go to Chillon with you."

"With me?" asked the young girl with the same placidity.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

one bit?" she thought, tragically. But Amelia did not jump. She had tragic impulses, or rather im- aginations of tragic impulses, but she never carried them out. It was left for little Lucy, flower-crowned and calmly sweet and gentle under honors, to be guilty of a tragedy of which she never dreamed. For that was the day when little Lucy was lost.

When the picnic was over, when the children were climbing into the straw-wagon and Madame and Miss Acton were genteelly disposed in the victoria, a lamentable cry arose. Sam drew his reins tight

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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard:

piled one upon another; there grew the sparse trees upon its steep sides, mingled with aloes that looked like the shapes of men; there was the granite bottom swept almost clean by floods in some dim age, and the little stream that flowed along it. There, too, was the spot where once I had outspanned my wagons on the night when my servants swore that they saw the Imikovu, or wizard-raised spectres, floating past them on the air in the shapes of the Princes and others who were soon to fall at the battle of the Tugela. Up it we went, I riding and Nombe, who had descended from the cart that followed, walking by my side and watching me.