Today's Stichomancy for Igor Stravinsky

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac:

his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of the garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he thought he had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some water from a brook and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on the road, he hid his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge their actions under all bearings deserts them, and they think to establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.

That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house, hoping that no

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac:

exhibit firmness, and the implacable eye of the public prosecutor lost none of her movements.

"Well, receive him," continued the functionary of the Revolution, "but do not keep him under your roof later than seven o'clock in the morning. To-morrow, at eight, I shall be at your door with a denunciation."

She looked at him with a stupid air that might have made a tiger pitiful.

"I will prove," he continued in a kindly voice, "the falsity of the denunciation, by making a careful search of the premises; and the nature of my report will protect you in future from all suspicions. I

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

And smooth as lapis is the sea.

The earth has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with a scarlet stain.

High in the mountains all alone The wild swans whistle on the lakes, But I have been as still as stone, My heart sings only when it breaks.

White Fog

Heaven-invading hills are drowned

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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac:

simplicity to present himself before Clement VII., who had perhaps congratulated himself on being well rid of him. The Pope had such good cause to blush for his own conduct that he received Strozzi extremely ill.

Strozzi thus began, early in life, his apprenticeship in the misfortunes of an honest man in politics,--a man whose conscience cannot lend itself to the capriciousness of events; whose actions are acceptable only to the virtuous; and who is therefore persecuted by the world,--by the people, for opposing their blind passions; by power for opposing its usurpations. The life of such great citizens is a martyrdom, in which they are sustained only by the voice of their