Today's Stichomancy for Michael York

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

All envy, burning in itself so sparkles That the eternal beauties it unfolds.

Whate'er from this immediately distils Has afterwards no end, for ne'er removed Is its impression when it sets its seal.

Whate'er from this immediately rains down Is wholly free, because it is not subject Unto the influences of novel things.

The more conformed thereto, the more it pleases; For the blest ardour that irradiates all things In that most like itself is most vivacious.

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

want the story. That's all."

And, when Bassett only continued to stare at him:

"I suppose I've begun wrong end first. I forgot about how it must seem to you. I dropped a block out of my life about ten years ago. Can't remember it. I'm not proud of it, but it's the fact. What I'm trying to do now is to fill in the gap. But I've got to, somehow. I owe it to the girl."

When Bassett could apparently find nothing to say he went on:

"You say I may be arrested if I go out on the street. And you rather more than intimate that a woman named Beverly Carlysle is mixed up in it somehow. I take it that I knew her."

The Breaking Point

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin:

large cumuli, -- cleared up, blowing very strong from S.S.W. Temperature 60 degs., dew-point 42 degs., -- difference 18 degs.

[2] Rengger, Natur. der Saeugethiere von Paraguay. S. 334.

[3] Captain Fitz Roy informs me that in April (our October), the leaves of those trees which grow near the base of the mountains change colour, but not those on the more elevated parts. I remember having read some observations, showing that in England the leaves fall earlier in a warm and fine autumn than in a late and cold one, The change in the colour being here retarded in the more elevated, and therefore colder

The Voyage of the Beagle

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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson:

he. "I will go to an end with it, or perish. And when I get home, I pray God this may be a dream, and I may find my father dancing."

So he went on after the bloodless thing that had escaped; and in the way he met the appearance of his mother, and she wept. "What have you done?" she cried. "What is this that you have done? Oh, come home (where you may be by bedtime) ere you do more ill to me and mine; for it is enough to smite my brother and your father."

"Dear mother, it is not these that I have smitten," said Jack; "it was but the enchanter in their shape. And even if I had, it would not prove that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."

And at this the appearance gobbled like a turkey.