Today's Stichomancy for Alan Greenspan

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

An islet in the sky: In Araby the dry, As o'er the sandy plain The panting camels cry To smell the coming rain:

So all things over earth A common law obey, And rarity and worth Pass, arm in arm, away; And even so, to-day, The printer and the bard,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

at his moustache ends. Frau Godowska adopted that peculiarly detached attitude of the proud parent. The only soul who remained untouched by her appeal was the waiter, who leaned idly against the wall of the salon and cleaned his nails with the edge of a programme. He was "off duty" and intended to show it.

"What did I say?" shouted the Herr Professor under cover of tumultuous applause, "tem-per-ament! There you have it. She is a flame in the heart of a lily. I know I am going to play well. It is my turn now. I am inspired. Fraulein Sonia"--as that lady returned to us, pale and draped in a large shawl--"you are my inspiration. To-night you shall be the soul of my trombone. Wait only."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

changed,--seeming as it changed to send a sharp pain through her heart: an old pain linked somehow with memories of bright windy Spanish hills, and summer scent of olive groves, and all the luminous Past;--it looked into her face with the soft dark gaze, with the unforgotten smile of ... dead Conchita!

And Carmen wished to thank; the smiling Virgin for that priceless bliss, and lifted up her eyes, but the sickness of ghostly fear returned upon her when she looked; for now the Mother seemed as a woman long dead, and the smile was the smile of fleshlessness, and the places of the eyes were voids and darknesses ... And the sea sent up so vast a roar that the dwelling rocked.

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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells:

the fleet and were busily at work adapting the exterior industrial apparatus of the place to the purposes of an aeronautic park. They had made a gas recharging station at the corner of the American Fall above the funicular railway, and they were, opening up a much larger area to the south for the same purpose. Over the power-houses and hotels and suchlike prominent or important points the German flag was flying.

The Zeppelin circled slowly over this scene twice while the Prince surveyed it from the swinging gallery; it then rose towards the centre of the crescent and transferred the Prince and his suite, Kurt included, to the Hohenzollern, which had been