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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

when Lucia warbles her woes, be it never so entrancingly, to an admiring house. It almost seems as if the garish publicity of using her name for operatic title were a special intervention of the Muse, that we might the less connect song with story,--two sensations that, like two lights, destroy one another by mutual interference.

Against this preference shown the sketch it may be urged that to appreciate such suggestions presupposes as much art in the public as in the painter. But the ability to appreciate a thing when expressed is but half that necessary to express it. Some understanding must exist in the observer for any work to be intelligible. It is only a question of degree. The greater 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:

The children in terror fly nimbly tow'rd home, And with them the kind one is careful to come:

"My darlings, oh, be not so mournful!-- "They'll blame us and beat us, until we are dead."-- "No, no! ye will find that all goes well," he said;

"Be silent as mice, then, and listen!

"And he by whose counsels thus wisely ye're taught, Is he who with children loves ever to sport.

The trusty and faithful old Eckart. Ye have heard of the wonder for many a day, But ne'er had a proof of the marvellous lay,--

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac:

"Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace."

Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose face he peered.

"/Parbleu/!" he cried, "I recognize you for a Champagnard of the /vieille roche/. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should see two of my former acquaintances. You," he said, addressing the organist, "you are little Bricheteau, the nephew of our good abbess, Mother Marie-des-Anges; but as for that tall skeleton, looking like a duke and peer, I can't recall his name. However, I don't blame my memory; after eighty-six years' service it may well be rusty."

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 Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy:

again.

"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid of railway carriages. Fear seizes me. I sat down again, and I said to myself: 'I must think of something else. For instance, of the inn keeper at whose house I took tea.' And then, in my imagination arose the dvornik, with his long beard, and his grandson, a little fellow of the same age as my little Basile. My little Basile! My little Basile! He will see the musician kiss his mother! What thoughts will pass through his poor soul! But what does that matter to her! She loves.

"And again it all began, the circle of the same thoughts. I

The Kreutzer Sonata