Today's Stichomancy for Oscar Wilde

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell:

"Yes. Why be an ostrich?"

"Oh, dear, it bores me to talk about such like. Don't you ever say pretty things, Captain Butler?"

"Would it please you if I said your eyes were twin goldfish bowls filled to the brim with the clearest green water and that when the fish swim to the top, as they are doing now, you are devilishly charming?"

"Oh, I don't like that. . . . Isn't the music gorgeous? Oh, I could waltz forever! I didn't know I had missed it so!"

"You are the most beautiful dancer I've ever held in my arms."

"Captain Butler, you must not hold me so tightly. Everybody is

Gone With the Wind

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard:

knows the "Water-lily", -- for that is what they call me -- and is ready to do what I want, but in the books that I have read about little girls in England it is not like that. Everybody thinks them a trouble, and they have to do what their schoolmistress likes. Oh! it would break my heart to be put in a cage like that and not to be free -- free as the air.'

'Would you not like to learn?' I asked.

'So I do learn. Father teaches me Latin and French and arithmetic.'

'And are you never afraid among all these wild men?'

'Afraid? Oh no! they never interfere with me. I think they believe that I am "Ngai" (of the Divinity) because I am so white

Allan Quatermain

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

make yourself another. Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being beautified. All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor hand.

THE MAN. "All the perfumes of Arabia"! "Beautified"! "Beautified"! a poem in a single word. Can this be my Mary? _[To the Lady]_ Why do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time? Are you ailing? You walk like the dead. Mary! Mary!

THE LADY. _[echoing him]_ Mary! Mary! Who would have thought that woman to have had so much blood in her! Is it my fault that my counsellors put deeds of blood on me? Fie! If you were women you would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully. Hold not up

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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall:

satisfactory to me; indeed the marks obtained appeared so eloquent that I forbore saying a word about them. My colleagues, however, followed the usual custom of sending in brief reports with their returns of marks. After the results were published, a leading article appeared in 'The Times,' in which the reports were largely quoted, praise being bestowed on all the candidates, except the excellent young fellows who had passed through my hands.

A letter from Trinity College drew my attention to this article, bitterly complaining that whereas the marks proved them to be the best of all, the science candidates were wholly ignored. I tried to set matters right by publishing, on my own responsibility, a letter