Today's Stichomancy for Oprah Winfrey

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

May loyal arms and ancient welcomings Receive him once again Who now no longer moves Here in this flickering dance of changing days, Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath, And the black master Death is over all, To chill with his approach, To level with his touch, The reigning strength of youth, The fluttered heart of age.

Woe for the fateful day when Delphi's word was lost --

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid while he looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.

"Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many needful offices

Mosses From An Old Manse

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy:

some things."

"In everything! What special thing did you mean?"

"If I wished not to live always in Casterbridge, for instance, upon finding that I should not be happy here?"

Henchard did not hear the reply; he might have done so and much more, but he did not care to play the eavesdropper. They went on towards the scene of activity, where the sheaves were being handed, a dozen a minute, upon the carts and waggons which carried them away.

Lucetta insisted on parting from Farfrae when they drew near the workpeople. He had some business with them and, thought

The Mayor of Casterbridge

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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter:

and keep awake all day (lest darkness and sleep should give advantage to the enemy); they must not OIL their hair (lest their husbands should make any SLIPS); they must eat sparingly and put aside rice at every meal (so that the men may not want for food). And so on. Similar superstitions are common. But they gradually lead to a little thought, and then to a little more, and so to the discovery of actual and provable influences. Perhaps one day the cord connecting the temple with Ephesus was drawn TIGHT and it was found that messages could be, by tapping, transmitted along it. That way lay the

Pagan and Christian Creeds