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 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

We would as willingly giue cure, as know. Enter Romeo.

Ben. See where he comes, so please you step aside, Ile know his greeuance, or be much denide

Moun. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay, To heare true shrift. Come Madam let's away.

Exeunt.

Ben. Good morrow Cousin

Rom. Is the day so young? Ben. But new strooke nine

Rom. Aye me, sad houres seeme long:

Romeo and Juliet

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James:

the great waterway looked on a clear, hot summer evening, and how the sense of floating between marble palaces and reflected lights disposed the mind to sympathetic talk. We floated long and far, and though Miss Tita gave no high-pitched voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had been in a boat

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

and then there came over her a sense of safety because of her confidence in the perfect physical creature in whose strength and nerve and agility her fate lay. Once she raised her eyes to the burning sun and murmured a prayer of thanks to her pagan god that she had not been permitted to destroy this godlike man, and her long lashes were wet with tears. A strange anomaly was La of Opar--a creature of circumstance torn by conflicting emotions. Now the cruel and bloodthirsty creature of a heartless god and again a melting woman filled with compassion and tenderness.

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells:

disappointed. After the real greatness and mystery of the older place, it seemed a poor little heap of stones; it did not even dominate the landscape; it was some way from the crest of the swelling down on which it stood and it was further dwarfed by the colossal air-ship hangars and clustering offices of the air station that the great war had called into existence upon the slopes to the south-west. "It looks," Sir Richmond said, "as though some old giantess had left a discarded set of teeth on the hillside." Far more impressive than Stonehenge itself were the barrows that capped the neighbouring crests.