Today's Stichomancy for Harry Houdini

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac:

des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine without hitting on any scheme which would release my trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I could pay as soon as I should have sold the linen. My stupidity proved to me that surgery was my only vocation. My good fellow, refined souls, whose powers move in a lofty atmosphere, have none of that spirit of intrigue that is fertile in resource and device; their good genius is chance; they do not invent, things come to them.

"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger also came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil:

But slain revive, and, taken, scape again? When execrable Troy in ashes lay, Thro' fires and swords and seas they forc'd their way. Then vanquish'd Juno must in vain contend, Her rage disarm'd, her empire at an end. Breathless and tir'd, is all my fury spent? Or does my glutted spleen at length relent? As if 't were little from their town to chase, I thro' the seas pursued their exil'd race; Ingag'd the heav'ns, oppos'd the stormy main; But billows roar'd, and tempests rag'd in vain.

Aeneid

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton:

Sophy's eyes wavered between the two and dropped down wearily. "It's you who are not fair--when I've said I wanted to be quiet."

"But why should my coming disturb you? I'm not asking now to come tomorrow. I only ask you not to leave without telling me when I'm to see you."

"Owen, I don't understand you!" his step-mother exclaimed.

"You don't understand my asking for some explanation, some assurance, when I'm left in this way, without a word, without a sign? All I ask her to tell me is when she'll see me."

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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton:

to watch for your name in the papers, and we'd talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I haven't seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I'd get sick myself, fretting about it." Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile. "Well, I can't afford to be sick again, that's a fact: the last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I'd come back alive, and I didn't much care if I did. You see I didn't know about George and the baby then."

She paused to readjust the bottle to the child's bubbling mouth.