Today's Stichomancy for George Washington

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:

rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the coversation. "He has gone! but has he broken it off with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her? Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in thesame house, we are strangers-strangers forever! She repeated again with special significance the word so dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God, how I loved him!...How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in at the door.

Anna Karenina

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac:

Father Goriot sprang between them, grasped the Countess' hand, and laid his own over her mouth.

"Good heavens, father! What have you been handling this morning?" said Anastasie.

"Ah! well, yes, I ought not to have touched you," said the poor father, wiping his hands on his trousers, "but I have been packing up my things; I did not know that you were coming to see me."

He was glad that he had drawn down her wrath upon himself.

"Ah!" he sighed, as he sat down, "you children have broken my heart between you. This is killing me. My head feels as if it

Father Goriot

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

understand."

They had kept silent simply because they thought that they were not called to say anything; and when I told them that I intended to run into Singapore and that the best chance for the ship and the men was in the efforts all of us, sick and well, must make to get her along out of this, I re- ceived the encouragement of a low assenting mur- mur and of a louder voice exclaiming: "Surely there is a way out of this blamed hole."

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The Shadow Line

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 Falk by Joseph Conrad:

dense undergrowth. These overgrown cheeks were sunken. It was an anchorite's bony head fitted with a Capuchin's beard and adjusted to a herculean body. I don't mean athletic. Hercules, I take it, was not an athlete. He was a strong man, suscep- tible to female charms, and not afraid of dirt. And thus with Falk, who was a strong man. He was extremely strong, just as the girl (since I must think of them together) was magnificently at- tractive by the masterful power of flesh and blood, expressed in shape, in size, in attitude--that is by

Falk