Today's Stichomancy for Denise Richards

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad:

could bear without crying out.

"Well. Is it to be 'partner' still?"

"You don't know what you ask."

"I know what I want . . ."

Massy stepped in and closed the door.

". . . And I am going to have a try for it with you once more."

His whine was half persuasive, half menacing.

"For it's no manner of use to tell me that you are poor. You don't spend anything on yourself, that's true enough; but there's another name for that. You

End of the Tether

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

stirrup as soon as any--when it clangs for the charge, my lance has not yet been the last laid in the rest. But for my hours of liberty or of idleness King Richard has no title to bar my recreation."

"Nevertheless," said De Vaux, "it is a folly to disobey the King's ordinance; so, with your good leave, I, as having authority in that matter, will send you a protection for my friend here."

"I thank you," said the Scot coldly; "but he knows my allotted quarters, and within these I can protect him myself.--And yet," he said, suddenly changing his manner, "this is but a cold return

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

And think of time . . . My father was a clown, My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt; And she was gotten with child in a strange way; And I was born in a cold eclipse of the moon, With the future in my eyes as clear as day.'

I sit before the gold-embroidered curtain And think her face is like a wrinkled desert. The crystal burns in lamplight beneath my eyes. A dragon slowly coils on the scaly curtain. Upon a scarlet cloth a white skull lies.

'Your hand is on the hand that holds three lilies.

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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard:

found traces which go far towards making him hope that the results of their wild quest may be a "magnificent and unexampled discovery." I greatly fear, however, that all he has discovered is death; for this letter came a long while ago, and nobody has heard a single word of the party since. They have totally vanished.

It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects

Long Odds