Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Gayheart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland:

confided our plans to a couple of the women servants whom we could trust, and asked them to procure proper outfits for us. They did so, and oh! what dirty old rags they were. The servants wept as they took off and folded up my silk garments and clad me in this beggar's garb."

"But your skin is so soft and fair, not at all like the skin of a woman exposed to the sun; and your black, shiny hair is not at all rusty and dirty like the hair of a beggar woman. I should think these facts would have caused your detection," I urged.

"That was easily remedied. We stained our faces, necks, hands and arms, and we took down our hair and literally rolled it in dust

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

in all the rooms, at so much a month, and people were quickly finding out what it was to make over this strange burden of the pampered to the widow of a clergyman. The widow, on her side, dilating on the initiations thus opened up to her, had been splendid to her young friend, over the way she was made free of the greatest houses--the way, especially when she did the dinner- tables, set out so often for twenty, she felt that a single step more would transform her whole social position. On its being asked of her then if she circulated only in a sort of tropical solitude, with the upper servants for picturesque natives, and on her having to assent to this glance at her limitations, she had found a reply

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne:

in an abrupt tone,--

"Who are you?" he asked, "and what do you claim to be to me?"

It was the colonists' history which he thus demanded, and for the first time. Perhaps this history recounted, he would tell his own.

In a few words Harding related all that had happened since their departure from Richmond; how they had managed, and what resources they now had at their disposal.

The stranger listened with extreme attention.

Then the engineer told who they all were, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft, Neb, himself, and, he added, that the greatest happiness they had felt since their arrival in Lincoln Island was on the return of the vessel

The Mysterious Island

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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde:

GUIDO

Away! away! [Exit the DUCHESS, who as she lifts the crimson curtain looks back for a moment at GUIDO, but he makes no sign. More thunder.] Now is life fallen in ashes at my feet And noble love self-slain; and in its place Crept murder with its silent bloody feet. And she who wrought it - Oh! and yet she loved me, And for my sake did do this dreadful thing. I have been cruel to her: Beatrice! Beatrice, I say, come back.