Today's Stichomancy for Jim Henson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov:

has taken it into her head, it seems, to confide the secrets of her heart to Vera: a happy choice, it must be confessed!

"I can guess what all this is leading to," said Vera to me. "You had better simply tell me at once that you are in love with her."

"But supposing I am not in love with her?"

"Then why run after her, disturb her, agitate her imagination! . . . Oh, I know you well! Listen -- if you wish me to believe you, come to

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

off the Rainbow and fell asleep on a little mound in this valley, not far from my castle. The sun came out and drove the Rainbow away, and before Poly wakened, I stole out and transformed her into a canary-bird in a gold cage studded with diamonds. The cage was so she couldn't fly away. I expected she'd sing and talk and we'd have good times together; but she has proved no company for me at all. Ever since the moment of her transformation, she has refused to speak a single word."

"Where is she now?" inquired Woot, who had heard tales

The Tin Woodman of Oz

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft:

since my heyday. My son was at this time just entering on the post-graduate studies leading to his resent professorship, and we worked together a great deal. IV I continued, however, to keep a careful record of the outré dreams which crowded upon me so thickly and vividly. Such a record, I argued, was of genuine value as a psychological document. The glimpses still seemed damnably like memories, though I fought off this impression with a goodly measure of success. In writing, I treated the phantasmata as

Shadow out of Time

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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac:

think of yours. The forty thousand francs you want would be, of course, a mere nothing to Ferdinand, who handles millions with that fat banker, Baron de Nucingen. Sometimes, at dinner, in my presence, they say things to each other which make me shudder. Du Tillet knows my discretion, and they often talk freely before me, being sure of my silence. Well, robbery and murder on the high-road seem to me merciful compared to some of their financial schemes. Nucingen and he no more mind destroying a man than if he were an animal. Often I am told to receive poor dupes whose fate I have heard them talk of the night before,--men who rush into some business where they are certain to lose their all. I am tempted, like Leonardo in the brigand's cave, to