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 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson:

thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.

When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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

they rejoice therein; yet if ye are patient and fear, their tricks shall not harm you, for what they do God comprehends.

When thou didst set forth early from thy people to settle for the believers a camp to fight;- but God both hears and knows;- when two companies of you were on the point of showing cowardice; but God was their guardian, for on God surely the believers do rely. Why! God gave you victory at Bedr when ye were in a poor way; fear God, then, haply ye may give thanks. When thou didst say unto the believers, 'Is it not enough for you that your Lord assists you with three thousand of the angels sent down from on high? Yea, if ye are patient and fear God, and they come upon you on a sudden, now, your

The Koran

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James:

looked up to here--I am assured of that."

"I don't know that I ever noticed it."

"It is because you are used to it, then. You ought to fill the place."

"How do you mean to fill it?" asked Lord Lambeth.

"You ought to be very clever and brilliant, and to know almost everything."

Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. "Shall I tell you something?" he asked. "A young man in my position, as you call it--"

"I didn't invent the term," interposed Bessie Alden. "I have seen it in a great many books."

"Hang it! you are always at your books. A fellow in my position, then, does very well whatever he does.

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 Bucolics by Virgil:

Upon the limber vine-shoot 'gin to swell."

THYRSIS "Here is a hearth, and resinous logs, here fire Unstinted, and doors black with ceaseless smoke. Here heed we Boreas' icy breath as much As the wolf heeds the number of the flock, Or furious rivers their restraining banks."

CORYDON "The junipers and prickly chestnuts stand, And 'neath each tree lie strewn their several fruits, Now the whole world is smiling, but if fair