Today's Stichomancy for Karl Rove

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare:

Would this my club might aggravate his woe.

[Strikes them both down with his club.]

ACT III. SCENE VI. Another part of the field.

[Enter Humber.]

HUMBER. Where may I find some desert wilderness, Where I may breath out curse as I would, And scare the earth with my condemning voice; Where every echoes repercussion May help me to bewail mine overthrow, And aide me in my sorrowful laments?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving:

writes to her sister, that with the true ingratitude of the male, the pigeon will leave her as soon as it needs her help no longer.

However, for the moment, "disfigured as it is, beautiful or ugly," she loves it. "Don't forget," she writes, "that a woman who is practical and foreseeing, she too enjoys her pigeon shooting, but the birds are her lovers."

Shortly after she left Vittel an event occurred which afforded Jeanne de la Cour the prospect of acquiring that settled position in life which, "practical and foreseeing," she now regarded as indispensable to her future welfare. Her husband, Gras, died, as she had foretold, in the Charity Hospital. The widow was free.

A Book of Remarkable Criminals

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson:

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot, As thou art a knight peerless.'

Thus he read; And ever in the reading, lords and dames Wept, looking often from his face who read To hers which lay so silent, and at times, So touched were they, half-thinking that her lips, Who had devised the letter, moved again.

Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all: 'My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear,

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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

was talking about--and she knew so much about Sisters.

So she began to cry, very softly.

Then she stopped crying long enough to say: ``But I never saw Sisters like that before!''

Then she took up her crying again right where she left off.

Then a little boy--but he seemed a very large boy to Bessie Bell with his long-striped-stocking-legs--said to Bessie Bell: ``No, Bessie Bell, they are not Sisters like Sister Helen Vincula and the Sisters that you know, but they are just what they say they are-- just own dear sisters.''

Then came to Bessie Bell that knowledge that we are often times slow