Today's Stichomancy for Toni Braxton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde:

Over his face hung a cowl of grey linen, and through the eyelets his eyes gleamed like red coals. And when he saw the Star-Child coming, he struck upon a wooden bowl, and clattered his bell, and called out to him, and said, 'Give me a piece of money, or I must die of hunger. For they have thrust me out of the city, and there is no one who has pity on me.'

'Alas!' cried the Star-Child, 'I have but one piece of money in my wallet, and if I bring it not to my master he will beat me, for I am his slave.'

But the leper entreated him, and prayed of him, till the Star-Child had pity, and gave him the piece of white gold.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad:

vous irritation she could have screamed at him out- right. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as though he had been sane, "Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even want to look at me."

He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger.

"What! That boy? Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles around? What do you think I am here for, my dear--my dear--my dear? . . . What? You wait. You just wait. You'll

To-morrow

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic:

IT may be that every other passenger in that morning train to London nursed either a silent rage, or declaimed aloud to fellow-sufferers in indignation, at the time consumed in making what, by the map, should be so brief a journey. In Thorpe's own compartment, men spoke with savage irony of cyclists alleged to be passing them on the road, and exchanged dark prophecies as to the novelties in imbecility and helplessness which the line would be preparing for the Christmas holidays. The old joke about people who had gone travelling years before, and were believed to be still lost somewhere in the recesses of Kent,

The Market-Place

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 Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

I had to take my own cries And thread them into a song.

One was a cry at black midnight And one when the first cock crew -- My heart was like a beaten child, But no one ever knew.

Life, you have put me in your debt And I must serve you long -- But oh, the debt is terrible That must be paid in song.

Alone