Today's Stichomancy for James Legge

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson:

dream. They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed-- I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.

XXII. And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive; For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty- five: And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw:

chaff instead of consolation. Agatha wanted to be understood and not to be chaffed. Finding herself unable to satisfy both these conditions, she resolved to do without sympathy and to hold her tongue. She had often had to do so before, and she was helped on this occasion by a sense of the ridiculous appearance her passion might wear in the vulgar eye. Her secret kept itself, as she was supposed in the college to be insensible to the softer emotions. Love wrought no external change upon her. It made her believe that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now a woman with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

LADY TEAZLE. And never differ again.

SIR PETER. No never--tho' at the same time indeed--my dear Lady Teazle--you must watch your Temper very narrowly--for in all our little Quarrels--my dear--if you recollect my Love you always began first--

LADY TEAZLE. I beg your Pardon--my dear Sir Peter--indeed-- you always gave the provocation.

SIR PETER. Now--see, my Love take care--contradicting isn't the way to keep Friends.

LADY TEAZLE. Then don't you begin it my Love!

SIR PETER. There now--you are going on--you don't perceive[,]

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 Odyssey by Homer:

house of Hades, and now Alcinous was reigning, with wisdom granted by the gods. To his house went the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, devising a return for the great-hearted Odysseus. She betook her to the rich-wrought bower, wherein was sleeping a maiden like to the gods in form and comeliness, Nausicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, high of heart. Beside her on either hand of the pillars of the door were two handmaids, dowered with beauty from the Graces, and the shining doors were shut.

But the goddess, fleet as the breath of the wind, swept towards the couch of the maiden, and stood above her head,

The Odyssey