Today's Stichomancy for Paul McCartney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson:

to certain British merchants; and once during an insurrection in San Domingo, for the rescue of certain others from a perilous imprisonment and the recovery of a 'chest of money' of which they had been robbed. Once, on the other hand, he earned his share of public censure. This was in 1837, when he commanded the ROMNEY lying in the inner harbour of Havannah. The ROMNEY was in no proper sense a man-of-war; she was a slave-hulk, the bonded warehouse of the Mixed Slave Commission; where negroes, captured out of slavers under Spanish colours, were detained provisionally, till the Commission should decide upon their case and either set them free or bind them to apprenticeship. To this ship, already an

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

language, we must remember that the parents are alive as well as the children, and that all the preceding generations survive (after a manner) in the latest form of it. And when, for the purposes of comparison, we form into groups the roots or terminations of words, we should not forget how casual is the manner in which their resemblances have arisen--they were not first written down by a grammarian in the paradigms of a grammar and learned out of a book, but were due to many chance attractions of sound or of meaning, or of both combined. So many cautions have to be borne in mind, and so many first thoughts to be dismissed, before we can proceed safely in the path of philological enquiry. It might be well sometimes to lay aside figures of speech, such as the 'root' and the 'branches,' the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville:

Cyprus, but they go gladly to Cyprus to rest them on the land, or else to buy things, that they have need to their living. On the sea-side men may find many rubies. And there is the well of the which holy writ speaketh of, and saith, FONS ORTORUM, ET PUTEUS AQUARUM VIVENTIUM: that is to say, 'the well of gardens, and the ditch of living waters.'

In this city of Tyre, said the woman to our Lord, BEATUS VENTER QUI TE PORTAVIT, ET UBERA QUE SUCCISTI: that is to say, 'Blessed be the body that thee bare, and the paps that thou suckedst.' And there our Lord forgave the woman of Canaan her sins. And before Tyre was wont to be the stone, on the which our Lord sat and

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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

of the stars. They saw him raise his head and they heard break from his lips the plaintive note of a lion calling to his fellows. Smith-Oldwick felt a distinct shudder pass through his frame, while Otobu, rolling the whites of his eyes in ter- rified surprise, sank tremblingly to his knees. But the girl thrilled and she felt her heart beat in a strange exultation, and then she drew nearer to the beast-man until her shoulder touched his arm. The act was involuntary and for a moment she scarce realized what she had done, and then she stepped silently back, thankful that the light of the stars was not sufficient to reveal to the eyes of her companions the flush

Tarzan the Untamed