Today's Stichomancy for T. E. Lawrence

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

happy marriage.'

'Well!' he began; and then looked down into the fire, and became silent.

'Well?' I asked.

'Well, there's this business of - Goguelat,' said he, still looking at the coals in the grate.

'What!' I exclaimed, starting in my chair. 'What's that you say?'

'This business about Goguelat,' he repeated.

'Ronald,' said I, 'this is not your doing. These are not your own words. I know where they came from: a coward put them in your mouth.'

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first. we return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the sound always smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly. And especially now, while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination to confront a customer.

House of Seven Gables

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine:

he suggested, in the voice of a question. "I expect I had opinions I wouldn't have been scattering around so free if I'd known what I was saying."

He was hardly prepared for the tide of color that swept her cheeks at his words nor for the momentary confusion that shuttered the shy eyes with long lashes cast down.

"Sick folks do talk foolishness, they say," he added, his gaze trained on her suspiciously.

"Do they?"

"Mrs. Winslow says I did. But when I asked her what it was I said she only laughed and told me to ask y'u. Well, I'm askin' now."

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 Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Drowned him in the deep abysses Of the lake of Gitche Gumee. From the headlands Hiawatha Sent forth such a wail of anguish, Such a fearful lamentation, That the bison paused to listen, And the wolves howled from the prairies, And the thunder in the distance Starting answered "Baim-wawa!" Then his face with black he painted, With his robe his head he covered,