Today's Stichomancy for Isaac Asimov

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter:

bright, small white clouds float in the transparent blue--a day when you linger perforce on the road to enjoy the sence. But suddenly here comes a man painfully running all hot and dusty and mopping his head, and with no eye, clearly, for anything around him. What is the matter? He is absorbed by one idea. He is running to catch a train! And one cannot help wondering what EXCEEDINGLY important business it must be for which all this glory and beauty is sacrificed, and passed by as if it did not exist.

Further we must remember that in our foolishness we very commonly chain ourselves, not only to things like sense-

Pagan and Christian Creeds

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

ranch house in this canyon area (1; 11; 19).

Monitoring teams resurveyed these towns about one month after the TRINITY detonation. At Bingham, gamma readings of 0.003 R/h and 0.0001 R/h were found at ground level outdoors and at waist level inside a building, respectively. At the town of White, the highest outdoor gamma reading was 0.008 R/h. Inside a building, the highest reading was 0.0005 R/h (11).

Surveys taken in the canyon area one month after the detonation indicated that gamma intensities at ground level had decreased to 0.032 R/h. The occupied ranch house was also surveyed, both inside and outside. The highest reading outdoors was 0.028 R/h, and the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain:

I reckon that's a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there AIN'T any corpse and nobody hain't been murdered. That cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been killed at all."

That graveled him, and he says:

"Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything. As long as YOU can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let anybody else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? None in the world. I don't see how you can act so.

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 Mountains by Stewart Edward White:

the bottom of this canon would be good feed, fine groves of trees, and a river of some size in which swam fish. The trail to the canon-bed was always bad, and generally dangerous. In many instances we found it bordered with the bones of horses that had failed. The river had somehow to be forded. We would camp a day or so in the good feed and among the fine groves of trees, fish in the river, and then address ourselves with much reluctance to the ascent of the other bad and dangerous trail on the other side. After that, in the natural course of events,