Today's Stichomancy for David Geffen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo:

the cold brow of Eponine; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose erect before him, then dispersed into thin air. Were all those dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragic beings merely dreams? had they actually existed? The revolt had enveloped everything in its smoke. These great fevers create great dreams. He questioned himself; he felt himself; all these vanished realities made him dizzy. Where were they all then? was it really true that all were dead? A fall into the shadows had carried off all except himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain of a theatre. There are curtains like this which drop in life.

Les Miserables

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe:

meet with some inconvenient accident shortly after;--either a pair of ear-rings or some cherished trinket would be missing, or an article of dress would be suddenly found utterly ruined, or the person would stumble accidently into a pail of hot water, or a libation of dirty slop would unaccountably deluge them from above when in full gala dress;-and on all these occasions, when investigation was made, there was nobody found to stand sponsor for the indignity. Topsy was cited, and had up before all the domestic judicatories, time and again; but always sustained her examinations with most edifying innocence and gravity of appearance. Nobody in the world ever doubted who did the things; but not a scrap of any direct

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

MARIA. Such reports are highly scandalous.

MRS. CANDOUR. So they are Child--shameful! shameful! but the world is so censorious no character escapes. Lord, now! who would have suspected your friend, Miss Prim, of an indiscretion Yet such is the ill-nature of people, that they say her unkle stopped her last week just as she was stepping into a Postchaise with her Dancing-master.

MARIA. I'll answer for't there are no grounds for the Report.

MRS. CANDOUR. Oh, no foundation in the world I dare swear[;] no more probably than for the story circulated last month, of Mrs. Festino's affair with Colonel Cassino--tho' to be sure that matter was never rightly clear'd up.

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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne:

that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle Toby's eyes--my father's ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle Toby's--neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father's lecture.

Chapter 2.XXXIII.

The gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms--I mean in man--for in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits--'tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by Intuition;--and beings inferior, as your worships all know--syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully