Today's Stichomancy for George Orwell

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

She is in Japan. She has taught the children there to put their fingers together as we do for "This is the church, this is the steeple," when she says: A bamboo road, With a floor-mat siding, Children are quarrelling, And parents chiding,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac:

you intended to leave Mademoiselle Gamard," he added, turning to the bewildered priest, "no doubt Mademoiselle Gamard's intention is to turn you out. Therefore you will have to go, whether you like it or not. Her sort of people play a sure game, they risk nothing."

This old gentleman, Monsieur de Bourbonne, could sum up and estimate provincial ideas as correctly as Voltaire summarized the spirit of his times. He was thin and tall, and chose to exhibit in the matter of clothes the quiet indifference of a landowner whose territorial value is quoted in the department. His face, tanned by the Touraine sun, was less intellectual than shrewd. Accustomed to weigh his words and measure his actions, he concealed a profound vigilance behind a

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Such was the elegant apostrophe that I made as I went out of the gates again, happily satisfied in myself, and feeling that I alone of all whom I had seen was able to profit by the silent poem of these green mounds and blackened headstones.

(1) RELIGIO MEDICI, Part ii. (2) DUCHESS OF MALFI.

SKETCHES CHAPTER IV - NURSES

I KNEW one once, and the room where, lonely and old, she waited for death. It was pleasant enough, high up above the lane, and looking forth upon a hill-side, covered all day

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 Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest:

We're not half so keen for money as one time we used to be; I am thinking more of mother and she's thinking more of me. Now we spend more time together, and I know we're meaning more To each other on life's journey, than we ever meant before. It was hard to understand it! Oh, the dreary nights we've cried! But we've found the depth of loving, since the day that Jessie died.

Hard Luck

Ain't no use as I can see In sittin' underneath a tree An' growlin' that your luck is bad, An' that your life is extry sad;

Just Folks