Today's Stichomancy for Louis Armstrong

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic:

at hand experiments of exceptional importance, on a very grand scale, and the result does not encourage me. I come to doubt indeed if money has any such power in these affairs as we think it has--for that matter, if it has any power at all. The shifting of money can always disorganize what is going on at the moment-- change it about and alter it in many ways--but its effect is only temporary. As soon as the pressure is released, the human atoms rearrange themselves as they were before, and the old conditions return. I think the only force which really makes any permanent difference is character--and yet

The Market-Place

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis:

jumping up and down while he mashed me into the mud like a mole under a pile-driver. I had showed that I had "a head on me like a nail" when I crawled under that floor and let Fatty step on me. There is a saying, "You can't keep a good man down." But Fatty kept me down, and so I must admit he was a better man than I was. Some people say you should cheer for the under-dog. But that isn't always fair. The under-dog deserves our sympathy, the upper-dog must be a better dog or he couldn't have put the other dog down. I give three cheers for the winner. Any tribe that adopts the rule of always hissing the winner has found a real way to discourage enterprise.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato:

delighted, seeing that I myself, although I am now advanced in years, am so far from having made a similar acquisition, that I do not even know in what way a friend is acquired. But I want to ask you a question about this, for you have experience: tell me then, when one loves another, is the lover or the beloved the friend; or may either be the friend?

Either may, I should think, be the friend of either.

Do you mean, I said, that if only one of them loves the other, they are mutual friends?

Yes, he said; that is my meaning.

But what if the lover is not loved in return? which is a very possible case.

Lysis

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 A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

the ancient traditions of the green men.

"She taught me rapidly the language and customs of my kind, and one night she told me the story I have told to you up to this point, impressing upon me the necessity for absolute secrecy and the great caution I must exercise after she had placed me with the other young Tharks to permit no one to guess that I was further advanced in education than they, nor by any sign to divulge in the presence of others my affection for her, or my knowledge of my parentage; and then drawing me close to her she whispered in my ear the name of my father.