Today's Stichomancy for Alan Moore

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson:

divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to perish alive under their claws.'

'Are you mad, girl?' he cried. 'I bid you be silent and lead on.'

Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. 'Lead on!' he cried again. 'Must I be all day,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde:

if he learned that that was the way in which you wasted your time and money.

CHASUBLE. Am I to understand then that there are to he no christenings at all this afternoon?

JACK. I don't think that, as things are now, it would be of much practical value to either of us, Dr. Chasuble.

CHASUBLE. I am grieved to hear such sentiments from you, Mr. Worthing. They savour of the heretical views of the Anabaptists, views that I have completely refuted in four of my unpublished sermons. However, as your present mood seems to be one peculiarly secular, I will return to the church at once. Indeed, I have just

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

Oh! Sister Mary Felice looked at Sister Theckla, and Sister Theckla looked at Sister Mary Felice--and they both said: ``Where did she learn that?''

But Bessie Bell knew that the little girl did not mean to throw her down, so she said, ``No, you didn't mean to do it.''

She had thought she ought to say that, and she had been getting ready to say that before the little girl had been made to beg her pardon, and now that she had gotten ready she said: ``No, you didn't mean to do it.''

Then the little girl stopped crying, too, and ran and caught Bessie Bell's hand again and said to her again:

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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton:

tenement-house flat; that living in St. Louis was more expensive than they had supposed, and that Mr. Ramy was kept out late at night (why, at a jeweller's, Ann Eliza wondered?) and found his position less satisfactory than he had been led to expect. Toward February the letters fell off; and finally they ceased to come.

At first Ann Eliza wrote, shyly but persistently, entreating for more frequent news; then, as one appeal after another was swallowed up in the mystery of Evelina's protracted silence, vague fears began to assail the elder sister. Perhaps Evelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but a man who could not even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled the layer