Today's Stichomancy for B. F. Skinner

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

to turn? He lifted his tormented face and looked at the sky. "Holy Mother of God, not to suffer! She was a good girl--not to suffer!" Frank had been wont to see himself in dra- matic situations; but now, when he stood by the windmill, in the bright space between the barn and the house, facing his own black doorway, he did not see himself at all. He stood like the hare when the dogs are approaching from all sides. And he ran like a hare, back and forth

O Pioneers!

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first.

LADY STUTFIELD. Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly most, most trying. Do tell me your conception of the Ideal Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful.

MRS. ALLONBY. The Ideal Husband? There couldn't be such a thing. The institution is wrong.

LADY STUTFIELD. The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to US.

LADY CAROLINE. He would probably be extremely realistic.

MRS. CAROLINE. The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. My boy! My boy! My boy! [Running her fingers through his hair.]

HESTER. [Coming over.] But you have two children now. You'll let me be your daughter?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. [Looking up.] Would you choose me for a mother?

HESTER. You of all women I have ever known.

[They move towards the door leading into garden with their arms round each other's waists. GERALD goes to table L.C. for his hat. On turning round he sees LORD ILLINGWORTH'S glove lying on the floor, and picks it up.]

GERALD. Hallo, mother, whose glove is this? You have 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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling:

Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might have blown up at a minute's notice, she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain temper.

We drifted on, up that miraculous valley. On either side of us were hills from a thousand or fifteen hundred feet high, wooded from crest to heel. As far as the eye could range forward were columns of steam in the air, misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like preadamite monsters, still pools of turquoise-blue stretches of blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled on itself twenty times, pointed bowlders of strange colors, and ridges of glaring, staring white.