Today's Stichomancy for Francisco de Paula Santander

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy:

'Let me kiss you--only a little one,' he said with his usual delicacy, and without reading the factitiousness of her manner.

'No; not one.'

'Only on your cheek?'

'No.'

'Forehead?'

'Certainly not.'

'You care for somebody else, then? Ah, I thought so!'

'I am sure I do not.'

'Nor for me either?'

'How can I tell?' she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in

A Pair of Blue Eyes

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith:

MARLOW. How's this? Sure I have not mistaken the house. Everything looks like an inn. The servants cry, coming; the attendance is awkward; the bar-maid, too, to attend us. But she's here, and will further inform me. Whither so fast, child? A word with you.

Enter MISS HARDCASTLE.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Let it be short, then. I'm in a hurry. (Aside.) I believe be begins to find out his mistake. But it's too soon quite to undeceive him.

MARLOW. Pray, child, answer me one question. What are you, and what may your business in this house be?

MISS HARDCASTLE. A relation of the family, sir.

She Stoops to Conquer

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister:

"Yes, he is. He can talk the actual words of the notes. Probably he could teach the course himself. I don't suppose he buys any strawberries, even when they get ripe and cheap here. What's the matter with you?"

Billy had broken suddenly into merriment. "I don't believe Oscar owns a bath," he explained.

"By Jove! so his notes will burn in spite of everything!" And both of the tennis boys shrieked foolishly.

Then Billy began taking his clothes off, strewing them in the window-seat, or anywhere that they happened to drop; and Bertie, after hitting another cork or two out of the window with the tennis racket,

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 Glasses by Henry James:

the better I feel. I'm ordered by the doctors to keep all the while in the air and go in for plenty of exercise. It keeps up my general health, you know, and if that goes on improving as it has lately done everything will soon be all right. All that was the matter with me before--and always; it was too reckless!--was that I neglected my general health. It acts directly on the state of the particular organ. So I'm going three miles."

I grinned at her from the doorstep while Mrs. Meldrum's maid stood there to admit me. "Oh I'm so glad," I said, looking at her as she paced away with the pretty flutter she had kept and remembering the day when, while she rejoined Lord Iffield, I had indulged in the