Today's Stichomancy for Bill Gates

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

"No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant.

"Is she HERE?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a sudden fury gave me back.

I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the window--straight before us. It's THERE-- the coward horror, there for the last time!"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner:

a vast world is resting on me--a whole globe: and I am a midge beneath it. I try to raise it, and I cannot. So I lie still under it--and let it crush me!"

"It's curious you should have the nightmare so up here," said the Colonial; "one gets so little to eat."

There was a silence: he was picking the little fine feathers from the bird, and the Englishman was watching the ants.

"Mind you," the Colonial said at last, "I don't say that in this case the Captain was to blame; Halket made an awful ass of himself. He's never been quite right since that time he got lost and spent the night out on the kopje. When we found him in the morning he was in a kind of dead sleep; we

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London:

calm with which they greeted his entrance. He shook hands with them in turn, striding from one to another and gripping their hands so heartily that Nathaniel Letton could not forbear to wince. Daylight flung himself into a massive chair and sprawled lazily, with an appearance of fatigue. The leather grip he had brought into the room he dropped carelessly beside him on the floor

"Goddle mighty, but I've sure been going some," he sighed. "We sure trimmed them beautiful. It was real slick. And the beauty of the play never dawned on me till the very end. It was pure and simple knock down and drag out. And the way they fell for it

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 The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Found no eager ear to listen, Could not breed ill-will between them, For they kept each other's counsel, Spake with naked hearts together, Pondering much and much contriving How the tribes of men might prosper. Most beloved by Hiawatha Was the gentle Chibiabos, He the best of all musicians, He the sweetest of all singers. Beautiful and childlike was he,