Today's Stichomancy for Alyssa Milano

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane:

the left, and to the lesser clamors which came from many directions, it occurred to him that they were fighting, too, over there, and over there, and over there. Heretofore he had sup- posed that all the battle was directly under his nose.

As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the blue, pure sky and the sun gleamings on the trees and fields. It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much

The Red Badge of Courage

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac:

Lucien discovered that Camusot was proceeding against him with great energy. When Coralie heard the name, and for the first time learned the dreadful and humiliating step which her poet had taken for her sake, the angelic creature loved him ten times more than before, and would not approach Camusot. The bailiff bringing the warrant of arrest shrank back from the idea of dragging his prisoner out of bed, and went back to Camusot before applying to the President of the Tribunal of Commerce for an order to remove the debtor to a private hospital. Camusot hurried at once to the Rue de la Lune, and Coralie went down to him.

When she came up again she held the warrants, in which Lucien was

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

no the crime carries the Punishment along with it. [Exeunt.]

END OF THE FIRST ACT

ACT II

SCENE I.--SIR PETER and LADY TEAZLE

SIR PETER. Lady Teazle--Lady Teazle I'll not bear it.

LADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter--Sir Peter you--may scold or smile, according to your Humour[,] but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what's more I will too--what! tho' I was educated in the country I know very well that women of Fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.

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 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

And therfore haue I little talke of Loue, For Venus smiles not in a house of teares. Now sir, her Father counts it dangerous That she doth giue her sorrow so much sway: And in his wisedome, hasts our marriage, To stop the inundation of her teares, Which too much minded by her selfe alone, May be put from her by societie. Now doe you know the reason of this hast? Fri. I would I knew not why it should be slow'd. Looke sir, here comes the Lady towards my Cell.

Romeo and Juliet