Today's Stichomancy for Richard Branson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner:

is Love."

Now life takes us by the neck and shows us a few other things,--new-made graves with the red sand flying about them; eyes that we love with the worms eating them; evil men walking sleek and fat, the whole terrible hurly-burly of the thing called life,--and she says, "What do you think of these?" We dare not say "Nothing." We feel them; they are very real. But we try to lay our hands about and feel that other thing we felt before. In the dark night in the fuel-room we cry to our Beautiful dream-god: "Oh, let us come near you, and lay our head against your feet. Now in our hour of need be near us." But He is not there; He is gone away. The old questioning devil is there.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

bond resumed:

"'Me? I was king of anywhere,

"'Peggin' away at nothing, hard.

"'Havin' no pet, particular care;

"'Havin' no trouble, or no pard;

"'"Just me," filled up my callin' card.' "Say, do you know I've learned to love this Knibbs per- son. I used to think of him as a poor attic prune grind- ing away in his New York sky parlor, writing his verse of the things he longed for but had never known; until, one day, I met a fellow between Victorville and Cajon

The Oakdale Affair

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac:

coined money) above the basilica of the fifth century,--the third monument of the third religion of this ancient town. He used the church as a necessary foundation, or stay, for the raising of the rampart; and he preserved it by covering it with feudal fortifications as with a mantle. Issoudun was at that time the seat of the ephemeral power of the Routiers and the Cottereaux, adventurers and free- lancers, whom Henry II. sent against his son Richard, at the time of his rebellion as Comte de Poitou.

The history of Aquitaine, which was not written by the Benedictines, will probably never be written, because there are no longer Benedictines: thus we are not able to light up these archaeological

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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Papered and painted, carved and gilt, And out of which, to my content, I netted seventy-five per cent.; Here at this board of jolly neighbours, I reap the credit of my labours. These were the days - I will say more - These were the grand old days of yore! The builder laboured day and night; He watched that every brick was right:

The decent men their utmost did; And the house rose - a pyramid!