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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy:

keep back their milk today. Folks, we must lift up a stave or two--that's the only cure for't."

Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody--in purely business-like tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief, being a decided improvement during the song's continuance. When they had gone through fourteen or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber:

Emma McChesney was only human, after all.

"By remembering that this is a business house, not a matrimonial parlor."

The dart found no lodging place in Miss Sharp's sleek armor. She seemed scarcely to have heard.

"My dear," she whispered, "his eyes! And his manner! You must be--whatchamaycallit --adamant. Is that the way you pronounce it? You know what I mean."

"Oh, yes," replied Emma McChesney evenly, "I--know what you mean."

She told herself that she was justified in the righteous contempt

Emma McChesney & Co.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

but it was the dead thoat that centred his interest more than either of the savage carnivores.

The harness was still upon the body of the huge Martian mount, and Carthoris could not doubt but that this was the very animal upon which the green warrior had borne away Thuvia of Ptarth.

But where were the rider and his prisoner? The Prince of Helium shuddered as he thought upon the probability of the fate that had overtaken them.

Human flesh is the food most craved by the fierce Barsoomian lion, whose great carcass and giant thews

Thuvia, Maid of Mars

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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac:

uncle, a barren track of miles covered with the glittering sand of the seashore. Here and there a few rocks lifted their heads; you might have thought them gigantic animals couchant on the dunes. Along the coast were reefs, around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance of great white roses, floating on the liquid surface or resting on the shore. Seeing this barren tract with the ocean on one side, and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up between Croisic and the rocky shore of Guerande, at the base of which lay the salt marshes, denuded of vegetation, I looked at Pauline and asked her if she felt the courage to face the burning sun and the strength to walk through sand.