Today's Stichomancy for Michelangelo

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne:

a little better. If you look so glum, you'll make all these outside folks think you envy their life above-ground."

"Never mind me, Jack," answered Harry. "You are jolly enough for two, I'm sure; that's enough."

"I'll be hanged if I don't feel your melancholy creeping over me though!" exclaimed Jack. "I declare my eyes

are getting quite dull, my lips are drawn together, my laugh sticks in my throat; I'm forgetting all my songs. Come, man, what's the matter with you?"

"You know well enough, Jack."

"What? the old story?"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

At me and my fate. My God, I could feel it -- That laughter! And then the children caught it; And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened. And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert! I was their victim -- And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle! As long as the earth we tread holds something A tortured heart can love, the meaning Of life is not wholly blurred; but after

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 Contrast by Royall Tyler:

MANLY

Indeed you are mistaken; my errand is not of amusement, but business; and as I neither drink nor game, my expenses will be so trivial, I shall have no occasion to sell my notes.

CHARLOTTE

Then you won't have occasion to do a very good thing. Why, here was the Vermont General--he came down some time since, sold all his musty notes at one stroke, and then laid the cash out in trinkets for his dear Fanny. I want a dozen pretty things my-