Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Romijn

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain:

of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and people that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such a big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it; if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box.

What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister:

made with him, and broke. We drew circles round his freedom, smaller and smaller. We allowed him such and such territory, then took it away and gave him less and worse in exchange. Throughout a century our promises to him were a whole basket of scraps of paper. The other day I saw some Indians in California. It had once been their place. All over that region they had hunted and fished and lived according to their desires, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We came. To-day the hunting and fishing are restricted by our laws--not the Indian's--because we wasted and almost exterminated in a very short while what had amply provided the Indian with sport and food for a very long while.

In that region we have taken, as usual, the fertile land and the running

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac:

Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had discerned her to be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used it; far from handling it, he was already finding himself crushed by it. This young Condottiere of the brain, condemned, like Napoleon, to give battle constantly, while knowing that a single defeat would prove the grave of his fortunes, had met a dangerous adversary in his protectress. For the first time in his turbulent life, he was playing a game with a partner worthy of him. He saw a place as Minister in the conquest of Madame d'Espard, so he was her tool till he could make her his--a perilous beginning.

The Hotel d'Espard needed a large household, and the Marquise had a

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 Pericles by William Shakespeare:

PERICLES. If there be such a dart in princes' frowns, How durst thy tongue move anger to our face?

HELICANUS. How dare the plants look up to heaven, from whence They have their nourishment?

PERICLES. Thou know'st I have power To take thy life from thee.

HELICANUS. [Kneeling.] I have ground the axe myself;