Today's Stichomancy for Simon Bolivar

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

you will find that there never was such a time?

ALCIBIADES: Really, Socrates, I cannot say.

SOCRATES: Then you did not learn them by discovering them?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.

SOCRATES: But just before you said that you did not know them by learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned them, how and whence do you come to know them?

ALCIBIADES: I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them through my own discovery of them; whereas, in truth, I learned them in the same way that other people learn.

SOCRATES: So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom? Do tell me.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

happy old people welcomed three happy little people into their comfortable little home. It would take another book, the size of this one, to tell you all the doings of that August day. First they went into the house and laid their wraps on the white coverlid of the great high feather-bed in the little spare room, and then Mrs. Kirk sat them down to three little blue bowls of bread-and-milk, remarking, "shure you must be after being hungry from your long drive," and the children ate it with far more relish than home bread-and-milk was ever eaten.

"Now I'm doubting"" said Patrick, standing with his back to the cooking-stove and with a corn-cob pipe in his mouth, "if it's the style to have bread-and-milk at 'At Homes' in the city."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough, Although he knew he might be silenced Out of all calm; and the night was coming.

"I climb for you the peak of his infamy That you may choose your fall if you cling to it. No more for me unless you say more. All you have left of a dream defends you:

"The truth may be as evil an augury As it was needful now for the two of us. We cannot have the dead between us.

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 Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

and passed through into the next apartment. The old man was paler than usual and his face bore an expression of pain and surprise, the same expression that showed in the faces of those gathered downstairs. The room he now entered was large like the others, the walls handsomely decorated, and every corner of it was flooded with sunshine. There were two men in this room, the village magistrate and the notary. Their expression, as they held out their hands to the doctor, showed that his coming brought great relief. And there was something else in the room, something that drew the eyes of all three of the men immediately after their silent greeting.

This was a great pool of blood which lay as a hideous stain on the