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 Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw:

more and more a chronicle of the fashionable enterprises of the only realities left on the stage: that is, the performers in their own persons. In this phase the playwright who attempts to revive genuine drama produces the disagreeable impression of the pedant who attempts to start a serious discussion at a fashionable at-home. Later on, when he has driven the tea services out and made the people who had come to use the theatre as a drawing-room understand that it is they and not the dramatist who are the intruders, he has to face the accusation that his plays ignore human feeling, an illusion produced by that very resistance of fact and law to human feeling which creates

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard:

understand how humiliated I feel, and the bitterest part of it is that I deserve it all. Of course I should have handed Sorais over to the guard, but I could not, and that is a fact. I let her go and I promised to say nothing, more is the shame to me. She told me that if I would side with her she would marry me and make me king of this country, but thank goodness I did find the heart to say that even to marry her I could not desert my friends. And now you can do what you like, I deserve it all. All I have to say is that I hope that you may never love a woman with all your heart and then be so sorely tempted of her,' and he turned to go.

Allan Quatermain

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

Jealousies of a Country Town The Secrets of a Princess The Peasantry A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Another Study of Woman The Member for Arcis

Bruel, Jean Francois du A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks A Start in Life A Prince of Bohemia

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 Astoria by Washington Irving:

despatched some of the people for one of the loads, with a request to Mr. Reed to retain with him as many of the men as he thought necessary to guard the remaining load, as he suspected hostile intentions on the part of the Indians. Mr. Reed, however, refused to retain any of them, saying that M'Lellan and himself were sufficient to protect the small quantity that remained. The men accordingly departed with the load, while Mr. Reed and M'Lellan continued to mount guard over the residue. By this time, a number of the canoes had arrived from the opposite side. As they approached the shore, the unlucky tin box of John Reed, shining afar like the brilliant helmet of Euryalus, caught their