Today's Stichomancy for Martin Luther King Jr.

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis:

at times! Have I ever told you that I'm fright- fully psychic?

Mr. Finch, the poet -- you know Fothergil Finch, don't you? -- he writes vers libre and poetry both -- Mr. Finch said to me the other evening, "You are EXTREMELY psychic!"

"How did you know it?" I asked him.

"Ah!" he said, "how DOES one know these things?"

And how true that is, when you come to think it over! How DOES one know?

He has the great magnetic eyes! I could feel

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato:

word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation and further confirmation.

PHAEDRUS: You mean the excellent Theodorus.

SOCRATES: Yes; and he tells how refutation or further refutation is to be managed, whether in accusation or defence. I ought also to mention the illustrious Parian, Evenus, who first invented insinuations and indirect praises; and also indirect censures, which according to some he put into verse to help the memory. But shall I 'to dumb forgetfulness consign' Tisias and Gorgias, who are not ignorant that probability is superior to truth, and who by force of argument make the little appear great and the great little, disguise the new in old fashions and the old in new fashions,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Would jar upon the ear of slumber, And, like Dodona's talking oak, Of oracles and judgments spoke. When to the music fingered well The feet of children lightly fell, The sire, who dozed by the decanters, Started, and dreamed of misadventures. The rotten brick decayed to dust; The iron was consumed by rust; Each tabid and perverted mansion Hung in the article of declension.

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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

And that the whole may have life, e'en as enjoy'd by each part. Now, my beloved one, turn thy gaze on the many-hued thousands

Which, confusing no more, gladden the mind as they wave. Every plant unto thee proclaimeth the laws everlasting,

Every flowered speaks louder and louder to thee; But if thou here canst decipher the mystic words of the goddess,

Everywhere will they be seen, e'en though the features are changed. Creeping insects may linger, the eager butterfly hasten,--

Plastic and forming, may man change e'en the figure decreed! Oh, then, bethink thee, as well, how out of the germ of acquaintance,

Kindly intercourse sprang, slowly unfolding its leaves;