Today's Stichomancy for Edgar Allan Poe

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac:

This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out, in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us, women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other in sentiment.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling:

his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy- cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a Christmas cracker - but it tore if you were not careful - for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of darkened

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades:

household purposes, but she had just come to the end of them. The fragments preserved, and now in my possession, are a goodly portion of one of the most rare books from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor. The title is a curious woodcut with the words "Gesta Romanorum" engraved in an odd-shaped black letter. It has also numerous rude wood-cuts throughout. It was from this very work that Shakespeare in all probability derived the story of the three caskets which in "The Merchant of Venice" forms so integral a portion of the plot. Only think of that cloaca being supplied daily with such dainty bibliographical treasures!

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 Tanach:

1_Chronicles 11: 23 And he slew an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits high; and in the Egyptian's hand was a spear like a weaver's beam; and he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear.

1_Chronicles 11: 24 These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and had a name among the three mighty men.

1_Chronicles 11: 25 Behold, he was more honourable than the thirty, but he attained not to the first three; and David set him over his guard.

1_Chronicles 11: 26 Also the mighty men of valour: Asahel the brother of Joab, Elhanan the son of Dodo of Beth-lehem;

1_Chronicles 11: 27 Shammoth the Harorite, Helez the Pelonite;

1_Chronicles 11: 28 Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite, Abiezer the Anathothite;

1_Chronicles 11: 29 Sibbecai the Hushathite, Ilai the Ahohite;

1_Chronicles 11: 30 Mahrai the Netophathite, Heled the son of Baanah the Netophathite;

1_Chronicles 11: 31 Ithai the son of Ribai of Gibeah of the children of Benjamin, Benaiah the Pirathonite;

1_Chronicles 11: 32 Hurai of Nahale-gaash, Abiel the Arbathite;

The Tanach