Today's Stichomancy for H. P. Lovecraft

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

run away with him. He had been depicting a flight and no one who knew David could imagine him in flight.

Nevertheless he was conscious of a new uneasiness and anxiety. When David recovered sufficiently he would go to Norada, as he had told Elizabeth, and there he would find the Donaldsons, and clear up the things that bothered him. After that -

He thought of Elizabeth, of her sweetness and sanity. He remembered her at the theater the evening before, lost in its fictitious emotions, its counterfeit drama. He had felt moved to comfort her, when he found her on the verge of tears.

"Just remember, they're only acting," he had said.

The Breaking Point

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ion by Plato:

SOCRATES: O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speak the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said--a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same. Let us consider this matter; is not the art of painting a whole?

ION: Yes.

SOCRATES: And there are and have been many painters good and bad?

ION: Yes.

SOCRATES: And did you ever know any one who was skilful in pointing out

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale:

A gay young wind's a-blowing, The little shower is done. But the rain-drops still are clinging And falling one by one -- Oh it's Paris, it's Paris, And spring-time has begun.

I know the Bois is twinkling In a sort of hazy sheen, And down the Champs the gray old arch Stands cold and still between. But the walk is flecked with sunlight

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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy:

along with that young woman, entering the art exhibition."

"Ah--dear me! Fond of her, apparently."

"They SAY they are cousins."

"Cousinship is a great convenience to their feelings, I should say?"

"Yes. So her husband thought, no doubt, when he divorced her.... Shall we look at the pictures, too?"

The trio followed across the green and entered. Jude and Sue, with the child, unaware of the interest they were exciting, had gone up to a model at one end of the building, which they regarded with considerable attention for a long while before they went on. Arabella and her friends came to it in due course, and the inscription

Jude the Obscure