Today's Stichomancy for Nick Cave

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe:

I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of

The Fall of the House of Usher

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

noir le-dedans! Cela doit etre terrible d'etre dans un trou si noir! Cela ressemble e une tombe . . . [aux soldats] Vous ne m'avez pas entendue? Faites-le sortir. Je veux le voir.

SECOND SOLDAT. Je vous prie, princesse, de ne pas nous demander cela.

SALOME. Vous me faites attendre.

PREMIER SOLDAT. Princesse, nos vies vous appartiennent, mais nous ne pouvons pas faire ce que vous nous demandez . . . Enfin, ce n'est pas e nous qu'il faut vous adresser.

SALOME [regardant le jeune Syrien] Ah!

LE PAGE D'HERODIAS. Oh! qu'est-ce qu'il va arriver? Je suis sur

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini:

interest than his own.

"You know," quoth he, "the desperate enterprise to which I stand committed. But it is a bargain between us that you do not betray me nor that enterprise so long as I leave you rid of my presence.

"That is the bargain I propose," said she.

He looked at her a moment with hungry eyes, and she found his glance almost more than she could bear, so strong was its appeal. Besides, it may be that she was a thought beglamoured by the danger in which he stood, which seemed to invest him with a certain heroic dignity.

"Ruth," he said at length, " it may well be that that which you desire may speedily come to pass; it may well be that in the course of this

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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad:

Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opu- lence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty.

She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one's own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years of her life.

A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs win-

To-morrow