Today's Stichomancy for Sarah Michelle Gellar

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

muerto. "

Henry Edwards was dead!

He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting in his rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed. They had made him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from the ruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned his hundred dollars.

So there was nothing to do at Viosca's Point except to rest. Feliu and all his men were going to Barataria in the morning on business;--the Doctor could accompany them there, and take the

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:

If one's attention strayed in the lecture-room it wandered to those battle-fields.

And that imagined panorama of war unfolds to an accompaniment of yelling newsboys in the narrow old Cambridge streets, of the flicker of papers hastily bought and torn open in the twilight, of the doubtful reception of doubtful victories, and the insensate rejoicings at last that seemed to some of us more shameful than defeats. . . .

A book that stands out among these memories, that stimulated me immensely so that I forced it upon my companions, half in the spirit

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac:

prisoners to be examined to the "mousetrap"; when it turns to the right, it conveys prisoners committed for trial, to the Conciergerie. Now it was to the right that the vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques Collin to set him down at the prison gate. Nothing can be more sinister. Prisoners and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron, with a space between them of about six feet. These are never both opened at once, and through them everything is so cautiously scrutinized that persons who have a visiting ticket pass the permit through the bars before the key grinds in the lock. The examining judges, or even the supreme judges, are not admitted without being identified. Imagine, then, the chances of communications or escape!--

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 A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov:

came the dense undergrowth which covered the flinty heights joining the principal chain of the Caucasus. We sat in a corner of the bastion, so that we could see everything on both sides. Suddenly I perceived someone on a grey horse riding out of the forest; nearer and nearer he approached until finally he stopped on the far side of the river, about a hundred fathoms from us, and began to wheel his horse round and round like one possessed. 'Strange!' I thought.

"'Look, look, Bela,' I said, 'you've got young