Today's Stichomancy for Ho Chi Minh

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

In this respect almost every Chinese child is a little tyrant. Father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are all made to do his bidding. In case any of them seems to be recalcitrant, the little dear lies down on his baby back on the dusty ground and kicks and screams until the refractory parent or nurse has repented and succumbed, when he get up and good-naturedly goes on with his play and allows them to go about their business. The child is t'ao ch'i. This disposition is general and not confined to any one

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber:

fiercely mustached. The clumsy iron-legged tables stood in two solemn rows down the length of the narrow room. Three or four stout, blond girls plodded back and forth, from tables to front shop, bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn, sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented cafe was Germany.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll:

Alice considered. `The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it--and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me --and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!'

`Then you think nothing would remain?' said the Red Queen.

`I think that's the answer.'

`Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: `the dog's temper would remain.'

`But I don't see how--'

`Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. `The dog would lose its temper, wouldn't it?'

`Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously.

Through the Looking-Glass

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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson:

the sons of chieftains were often educated on the continent of Europe. They went abroad speaking Gaelic; they returned speaking, not English, but the broad dialect of Scotland. Now, what idea had they in their minds when they thus, in thought, identified themselves with their ancestral enemies? What was the sense in which they were Scotch and not English, or Scotch and not Irish? Can a bare name be thus influential on the minds and affections of men, and a political aggregation blind them to the nature of facts? The story of the Austrian Empire would seem to answer, NO; the far more galling business of Ireland clenches the negative from nearer home. Is it common education, common morals, a common language or