Today's Stichomancy for Michael Moore

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

going to make a garden. I ain't going to try for hay in the ten-acre lot. I have stopped. I have worked for nothing except just enough to keep soul and body together. I have had bad luck. But that isn't the real reason why I have stopped. Look at here, Mr. Wheaton, spring is coming. I have never in my life had a chance at the spring nor the summer. This year I'm going to have the spring and the sum- mer, and the fall, too, if I want it. My apples may fall and rot if they want to. I am going to get as much good of the season as they do."

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells:

your marrow all the time you are thinking about these things. Oh, I'm not jealous, dear. I love you for loving her. I love you in relation to her. But there it is, an added weight against us, another thing worth saving."

Presently, I remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into my face. "We've done wrong--and parting's paying. It's time to pay. We needn't have paid, if we'd kept to the track. . . . You and I, Master, we've got to be men."

"Yes," I said; "we've got to be men."

I was driven to tell Margaret about our situation by my intolerable

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

but you will know that yourself, - the cab we are looking for will have new glass in the right-hand window." Thus Muller spoke to his companion as he put the glove into his pocket and unfolded the tramway ticket. Amster understood that they had found the starting point of the drive of the night before.

"I will go to all coupe stands," he said eagerly.

"Yes, but we may be able to find it quicker than that." Muller took the little notebook, which he was now carrying in his pocket, and took from it the tramway ticket which was in the cover. He compared it with the one he had just found. They were both marked for the same hour of the day and for the same ride.

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 Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Who pity and spare the fainting gladiator Blood-stained in Roman amphitheatres,-- Take him, and crucify him if ye will; But if the immortal Gods do ever mingle With the affairs of mortals, which I doubt not, And hold the attribute of justice dear, They will commission the Eumenides To scatter you to the four winds of heaven, Exacting tear for tear, and blood for blood. Here, take ye this inscription, Priests, and nail it Upon the cross, above your victim's head: