Today's Stichomancy for Sarah Silverman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

number he had ever closely beheld. By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night. He had come to apologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with some- thing like a sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she had returned -- only from a visit to Liddy, as he supposed, the Bath escapade being quite unknown to him. He inquired for Miss Everdene. Liddy's manner was odd, but he did not notice it. She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her absence the blind of the

Far From the Madding Crowd

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

"I won't promise anything of the sort," declared Chiss.

"Why not?"

"Because it is my nature to throw quills, and every animal must do what Nature intends it to do. It isn't fair for you to blame me. If it were wrong for me to throw quills, then I wouldn't be made with quills to throw. The proper thing for you to do is to keep out of my way.

"Why, there's some sense in that argument, admitted the Shaggy Man, thoughtfully; "but

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

open) there were appearing the noses of three horses--one to the right, one in the middle, and one to the left, after the fashion of triumphal groups of statuary. Above them, on the box seat, were seated a coachman and a valet, while behind, again, there could be discerned a gentleman in a scarf and a fur cap. Only when the equipage had entered the courtyard did it stand revealed as a light spring britchka. And as it came to a halt, there leapt on to the verandah of the mansion an individual of respectable exterior, and possessed of the art of moving with the neatness and alertness of a military man.

Upon this Tientietnikov's heart stood still. He was unused to receiving visitors, and for the moment conceived the new arrival to be

Dead Souls

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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;-- But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth and knelt upon his breast

And listened till the fluttering pulse was stilled.