Today's Stichomancy for Frank Lloyd Wright

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James:

The young man gave his joyous laugh again. "If that means I have no property, you are right!"

"Don't joke about your poverty," said his sister. "That is quite as vulgar as to boast about it."

"My poverty! I have just finished a drawing that will bring me fifty francs!"

"Voyons," said the lady, putting out her hand.

He added a touch or two, and then gave her his sketch. She looked at it, but she went on with her idea of a moment before. "If a woman were to ask you to marry her you would say, 'Certainly, my dear, with pleasure!' And you would marry her

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson:

tabooed, what makes the folks afraid of me?"

She stood and looked at me with eyes like saucers.

"You no savvy?" she gasps at last.

"No," said I. "How would you expect me to? We don't have any such craziness where I come from."

"Ese no tell you?" she asked again.

(ESE was the name the natives had for Case; it may mean foreign, or extraordinary; or it might mean a mummy apple; but most like it was only his own name misheard and put in a Kanaka spelling.)

"Not much," said I.

"D-n Ese!" she cried.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker:

As he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious. He was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain. His very heart was bleeding, and it took all the manhood of him, and there was a royal lot of it, too, to keep him from breaking down. I paused before answering, for I felt that I must not betray anything which the Professor wished kept secret, but already he knew so much, and guessed so much, that there could be no reason for not answering, so I answered in the same phrase.

"That's so."

"And how long has this been going on?"

Dracula

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 The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac:

should like to see him brought before the Court of Peers; it might save his future. You are afraid he will be condemned; but I say, may it please God his lawyer lets him be convicted. Go to Issoudun, secure the property for your children. If you don't succeed, if your brother has made a will in favor of that woman, and you can't make him revoke it,--well then, at least get all the evidence you can of undue influence, and I'll institute proceedings for you. But you are too honest a woman to know how to get at the bottom facts of such a matter. I'll go myself to Issoudun in the holidays,--if I can."

That "go myself" made Joseph tremble in his skin. Desroches winked at him to let his mother go downstairs first, and then the lawyer