Today's Stichomancy for Henry Ford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

To have driven me

An untimely shroud of death to wear?

"But from out my coffin's prison-bounds

By a wond'rous fate I'm forced to rove, While the blessings and the chaunting sounds

That your priests delight in, useless prove.

Water, salt, are vain

Fervent youth to chain,

Ah, e'en Earth can never cool down love!

"When that infant vow of love was spoken,

Venus' radiant temple smiled on both.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest:

Its cardinal virtue is -- it thinks!

Promotion comes to him who tries Not solely for a selfish prize, But day by day and year by year Holds his employer's interests dear. Who measures not by what he earns The sum of labor he returns, Nor counts his day of toiling through Till he's done all that he can do. His strength is not of muscle bred, But of the heart and of the head.

A Heap O' Livin'

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac:

landlord, little Molineux. Every one has dreamed dreams filled with the events of a lifetime, in which there appears and reappears some wayward being, commissioned to play the mischief and be the villain of the piece. To Birotteau's fancy Molineux seemed delegated by chance to fill some part in his life. His weird face had grinned diabolically at the ball, and he had looked at its magnificence with an evil eye. Catching sight of him again at this moment, Cesar was all the more reminded of the impression the little skin-flint (a word of his vocabulary) had made upon him, because Molineux excited fresh repugnance by reappearing in the midst of his anxious reverie.

"Monsieur," said the little man, in his atrociously hypocritical

Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

It didn't seem out of place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a young man. I guess people always get what's hard- est for them, Alexandra." Marie gathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at the cane. "Frank would be all right in the right place," she said reflectively. "He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing. Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for Frank--now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man

O Pioneers!