Today's Stichomancy for Theodore Roosevelt

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells:

sacramental ceremonies. The disposition to form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all too strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such organisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living faith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so much as a definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for worship and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little manifest good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for God to irradiate your soul.

All these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne:

descend, had disappeared in the crowd which thronged the platforms of the railway station.

CHAPTER V THE TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS

NIJNI-NOVGOROD, Lower Novgorod, situate at the junc- tion of the Volga and the Oka, is the chief town in the dis- trict of the same name. It was here that Michael Strogoff was obliged to leave the railway, which at the time did not go beyond that town. Thus, as he advanced, his traveling would become first less speedy and then less safe.

Nijni-Novgorod, the fixed population of which is only

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome:

alone, he wrote, the first "Saturdaying" on the Moscow-Kazan railway was an event of historical significance, and not for Russia alone.

Whether Lenin was right or wrong in so thinking, "Saturdayings" became a regular institution, like Dorcas meetings in Victorian England, like the thousands of collective working parties instituted in England during the war with Germany. It remains to be seen how long they will continue, and if they will survive peace when that comes. At present

the most interesting point about them is the large proportion of non-Communists who take an enthusiastic part in them.

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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass:

In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection, to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other sea-ports at the time, toward "those who go down