Today's Stichomancy for Jean Piaget

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

had given up the quest. That suspicion should fall on him seemed scarcely credible since the only men who knew that he had left the long-house that night lay dead upon the very spot where the treasure reposed.

MAN OR MONSTER?

When Muda Saffir turned from the two Dyaks who had brought him news of the treasure he hastened to the long-house and arousing the chief of the tribe who domiciled there explained that necessity required that the rajah have at once two war prahus fully manned.

The Monster Men

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber:

I have my coffee and cigar here with you? "

"Blackie here is responsible for my being initiated into the sticky mysteries of Baumbach's. I never should have discovered it if he had not offered to act as personal conductor. You know one another, I believe?"

The two men shook hands across the table. There was something forced and graceless about the act. Blackie eyed Von Gerhard through a misty curtain of cigarette smoke. Von Gerhard gazed at Blackie through narrowed lids as he lighted his cigar. "I'm th' gink you killed off two or three years back,"

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare:

The prisoner of emured dark constraint, The sick man best sets down the pangs of death, The man that starves the sweetness of a feast, The frozen soul the benefit of fire, And every grief his happy opposite: Love cannot sound well but in lover's tongues; Give me the pen and paper, I will write.

[Enter Countess.]

But soft, here comes the treasurer of my spirit.-- Lodowick, thou knowst not how to draw a battle; These wings, these flankers, and these squadrons

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 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy:

Elizabeth-Jane having now changed her orbit from one of gay independence to laborious self-help, thought the weather good enough for such declined glory as hers, if her friend would only face it--a matter of doubt. She went to the boot-room where her pattens had hung ever since her apotheosis; took them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as she had done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella, she went off to the place of appointment--intending, if the lady were not there, to call at the house.

One side of the churchyard--the side towards the weather--

The Mayor of Casterbridge