Today's Stichomancy for Robin Williams

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner:

politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men of any other race.)

That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one female with gifts in the direction of state administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants' school, perhaps without the slightest gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life-blood.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells:

I perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me, what had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions of utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity. The three creatures engaged in this mysterious rite were human in shape, and yet human beings with the strangest air about them of some familiar animal. Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it--into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence--some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius:

around her, she would have been able to throw off her newly-born fear of him and this disheartening shattering of her faith in his kindness. But he was going to the other extreme, growing harder as she was becoming more panicky.

"Nervous? What's there to be nervous about?" Rose's answer was stifled sobbing. "You're not sorry you married today, I hope?" She shook her head. "Then what's this mean, anyway?"

"I was wondering if we are going to be happy after all--"

"Happy? You don't like this place. That's the trouble. I was afraid of this, but I thought you knew what you were about when you said you could stand it for a while."

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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And daily the horizon scan From Hatteras or Matapan. Be sure, before that pirate's old, He will have made a pot of gold, And will retire from all his labours And be respected by his neighbours. YOU ALSO SCAN YOUR LIFE'S HORIZON FOR ALL THAT YOU CAN CLAP YOUR EYES ON.

A MARTIAL ELEGY FOR SOME LEAD SOLDIERS

For certain soldiers lately dead Our reverent dirge shall here be said.