Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Gayheart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

heeded the call and came-- Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul may speak sooth unto soul, Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal of Nowhere for our goal!

What planet-crowned Dusk that wanders the steeps of our firmament there Hath gems that may match with the dew-opals meshed in thine opulent hair? What wind-witch that skims the curled billows with feet they are fain to caress

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

my predilection for the life of the East. After thirty-five years of slumber, my highly-respected mother woke up to the recollection that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when a vine-stock is eradicated, some years after shoots come up to the surface of the ground; well, my dear boy, my mother had almost torn me up by the roots from her heart, and I sprouted again in her head. At the age of fifty-eight, she thinks herself old enough to think no more of any men but her son. At this juncture she has met in some hot- water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid-- English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and, like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott:

And say unto my lady, in this dear night-weed dress'd, To the best armed champion I will not veil my crest; But if I live and bear me well 'tis her turn to take the test." Here, gentles, ends the foremost fytte of the Lay of the Bloody Vest.

"Thou hast changed the measure upon us unawares in that last couplet, my Blondel," said the King.

"Most true, my lord," said Blondel. "I rendered the verses from the Italian of an old harper whom I met in Cyprus, and not having had time either to translate it accurately or commit it to memory, I am fain to supply gaps in the music and the verse as I

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 Before Adam by Jack London:

future were yet to come upon the stage, and in the meantime we pounded nuts and lived. It--vas a good year, I remember, for nuts. We used to fill gourds with nuts and carry them to the pounding-places. We placed them in depressions in the rock, and, with a piece of rock in our hands, we cracked them and ate them as we cracked.

It was the fall of the year when Lop-Ear and I returned from our long adventure-journey, and the winter that followed was mild. I made frequent trips to the neighborhood of my old home-tree, and frequently I