Today's Stichomancy for H. P. Lovecraft

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

Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. "I'll go to the American Consul; I'll borrow some money of him - just for the few days, on the strength of the telegram."

Morgan was hilarious. "Show him the telegram - then collar the money and stay!"

Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for Morgan he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more serious, and to prove he hadn't meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the Consulate - since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his friend - but made sure of their affair by going with him. They splashed through the tortuous

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars 280

The Waste Land

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

What virtue breeds iniquity devours: We have no good that we can say is ours, But ill-annexed Opportunity Or kills his life or else his quality.

'O Opportunity, thy guilt is great: 'Tis thou that executest the traitor's treason; Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season; 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.

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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas:

In a moment that part of the floor on which Dantes was resting his two hands, as he knelt with his head in the opening, suddenly gave way; he drew back smartly, while a mass of stones and earth disappeared in a hole that opened beneath the aperture he himself had formed. Then from the bottom of this passage, the depth of which it was impossible to measure, he saw appear, first the head, then the shoulders, and lastly the body of a man, who sprang lightly into his cell.

Chapter 16 A Learned Italian.

The Count of Monte Cristo