Today's Stichomancy for Will Wright

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

two and still be robbed of thy prey?"

Peter of Colfax entertained no doubt but that his fair prisoner would carry out her threat and so he set his men to work with cold chisels, axes and saws upon the huge door.

For hours they labored upon that mighty work of defence, and it was late at night ere they made a little opening large enough to admit a hand and arm, but the first one intruded within the room to raise the bars was drawn quickly back with a howl of pain from its owner. Thus the keen dagger in the girl's hand put

The Outlaw of Torn

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius:

Mrs. Wade, till the undertaker fixes him up," and she was once more alone.

As if transfixed, she continued to stand, looking beyond the lamp, beyond the bed on which her son's large figure was outlined by the sheet, beyond the front door which faced her, beyond--into the night, looking for Martin, waiting for him to come home to his boy. She asked herself again and again how she had been so restrained when her Billy had been carried in. After what seemed interminable ages, she heard heavy steps on the back porch and knew that her husband had returned at last. He brought in with him a gust of wind that caused the lamp to smoke. She held it

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac:

The manners of that period will also serve to explain this alliance between religion and love. In the first place society had no meeting- place except before the altar. Lords and vassals, men and women were equals nowhere else. There alone could lovers see each other and communicate. The festivals of the Church were the theatre of former times; the soul of woman was more keenly stirred in a cathedral than it is at a ball or the opera in our day; and do not strong emotions invariably bring women back to love? By dint of mingling with life and grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made itself a sharer of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion had passed into science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes, into

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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac:

Schmucke returned to his prayers. At daybreak the priest went, and at seven o'clock in the morning the doctor came to see Schmucke, and spoke kindly and tried hard to persuade him to eat, but the German refused.

"If you do not eat now you will feel very hungry when you come back," the doctor told him, "for you must go to the mayor's office and take a witness with you, so that the registrar may issue a certificate of death."

"/I/ must go!" cried Schmucke in frightened tones.

"Who else? . . . You must go, for you were the one person who saw him die."