Today's Stichomancy for Stephen Hawking

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson:

a masterpiece; and I still intend - somehow, some time or other - to see your face and to hold your hand.

Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses the great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes at last to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland: a house - for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant station - where you are well-beloved.

R. L. S. Skerryvore,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest:

friends to me, And I knew the birds, and I owned a dog, and we both could hear and see. Oh, never from tongues of men have dropped such messages wholly glad As the things that live in the great outdoors once told to a little lad.

And I'm sorry for him who cannot hear what the tall trees have to say, Who is deaf to the call of a running stream and the lanes that lead to play.

A Heap O' Livin'

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe:

Alva. Says the messenger so?

Silva. No, my own heart tells me.

Alva. In thee speaks my evil genius. (After reading the letter, he makes a sign to the two, and they retire to the gallery. Alva remains alone in front of the stage.) He comes not! Till the last moment he delays declaring himself. He ventures not to come! So then, the cautious man, contrary to all expectations, is for once cautious enough to lay aside his wonted caution. The hour moves on! Let the finger travel but a short space over the dial, and a great work is done or lost--irrevocably lost; for the opportunity can never be retrieved, nor can our intention remain concealed. Long had I maturely weighed everything, foreseen even this

Egmont

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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells:

approaching the grey stone bridge that crosses just where Hyde Park ends and Kensington Gardens begins. Following upon his doubts of his religious faith had come another still more extraordinary question: "Although there is a God, does he indeed matter more in our ordinary lives than that same demonstrable Binomial Theorem? Isn't one's duty to Phoebe plain and clear?" Old Likeman's argument came back to him with novel and enhanced powers. Wasn't he after all selfishly putting his own salvation in front of his plain duty to those about him? What did it matter if he told lies, taught a false faith, perjured and damned himself, if after all those others were thereby saved and