Today's Stichomancy for Neil Gaiman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis:

one. The doctor and the two Blanchet brothers and me managed to get backed up agin the fence in a row when the rush come. I guess I done my share, and I guess the Blanchet brothers done theirn, too. But they was too many of 'em for us--too dern many. It wouldn't of ended as quick as it did if Doctor Kirby hadn't gone clean crazy. His back was to the fence, and he cleaned out everything in front of him, and then he give a wild roar jest like a bull and rushed that hull gang-- twenty men, they was--with his head down.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber:

may fit their shops with mirrors, and cut-glass chandeliers and Oriental rugs and mahogany, but you sit serenely by, and you smile, and you change nothing. You let the brown walls grow dimmer with age; you see the marble-topped tables turning yellow; you leave bare your wooden floor, and you smile, and smile, and smile."

"Fine!" applauded Blackie. "You're on. And here comes Rosie."

Rosie, the radiant, placed on the table cups and saucers of an unbelievable thickness. She set them down on the marble surface with a crash as one who knows well

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

ECHECRATES: Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison with Socrates on the day when he drank the poison?

PHAEDO: Yes, Echecrates, I was.

ECHECRATES: I should so like to hear about his death. What did he say in his last hours? We were informed that he died by taking poison, but no one knew anything more; for no Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, and it is a long time since any stranger from Athens has found his way hither; so that we had no clear account.

PHAEDO: Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?

ECHECRATES: Yes; some one told us about the trial, and we could not understand why, having been condemned, he should have been put to death,

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 Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock:

her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms, but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her, that he could not help considering her word a better security than locks and bars.

The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty; and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler, being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions, and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry