Today's Stichomancy for Ariel Sharon

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley:

if there are no lives lost.

But is it not cruel of Madam How to make such floods?

Well--let us ask one of these men who are looking over the bridge.

Why, what does he say? I cannot understand one word. Is he talking Irish?

Irish-English at least: but what he said was, that it was a mighty fine flood entirely, praised be God; and would help on the potatoes and oats after the drought, and set the grass growing again on the mountains.

And what is he saying now?

That the river will be full of salmon and white trout after this.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry:

"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents between us in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the pre-digested hoe-cake belt of Southern Indiana. How we got off the train there the night before I can't tell you; for she went through the village so fast that what looked like a saloon to us through the car window turned out to be a composite view of a drug store and a water tank two blocks apart. Why we got off at the first station we could, belongs to a little oroide gold watch and Alaska diamond deal we failed to pull off the day before, over the Kentucky line.

"When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something like the fumes of nitro-muriatic acid, and heard something heavy fall on the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

looked at Sister Mary Felice--and they both said: ``Where did she learn that?''

But Bessie Bell knew that the little girl did not mean to throw her down, so she said, ``No, you didn't mean to do it.''

She had thought she ought to say that, and she had been getting ready to say that before the little girl had been made to beg her pardon, and now that she had gotten ready she said: ``No, you didn't mean to do it.''

Then the little girl stopped crying, too, and ran and caught Bessie Bell's hand again and said to her again:

``I beg your pardon!

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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac:

superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is witty." Genius always presupposes moral insight. This insight may be applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must be able to see the sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a surgeon or a physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might have been no less great as a minister than he was as a surgeon.

Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his