Today's Stichomancy for Jesse James

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad:

directly; and to get out of the way bolted on all-fours towards the poop-ladder. The first person I saw was Mahon, with eyes like saucers, his mouth open, and the long white hair standing straight on end round his head like a silver halo. He was just about to go down when the sight of the main-deck stirring, heaving up, and changing into splinters before his eyes, petrified him on the top step. I stared at him in unbelief, and he stared at me with a queer kind of shocked curiosity. I did not know that I had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, that my young mustache was burnt off, that my face was

Youth

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato:

Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do verily believe that you have been the cause of another.

PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I heard a voice saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety, and that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend, how prophetic is the human soul! At the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

IOKANAAN. Ou est celle qui ayant vu des hommes peints sur la muraille, des images de Chaldeens tracees avec des couleurs, s'est laissee emporter e la concupiscence de ses yeux, et a envoye des ambassadeurs en Chaldee?

SALOME. C'est de ma mere qu'il parle.

LE JEUNE SYRIEN. Mais non, princesse.

SALOME. Si, c'est de ma mere.

IOKANAAN. Ou est celle qui s'est abandonnee aux capitaines des Assyriens, qui ont des baudriers sur les reins, et sur la tete des tiares de differentes couleurs? Ou est celle qui s'est abandonnee aux jeunes hommes d'Egypte qui sont vetus de lin et d'hyacinthe, et

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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister:

not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!" Her voice grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: "It had travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was