Today's Stichomancy for Kobe Bryant

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

perceives among the innumerable forms of Nature,--relations so multiplied as to seem infinite; for if, up to the present time, no one has been able to enumerate the separate terrestrial creations, who can reckon their correlations? Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity? Here, then, you fall into a perception of the infinite which undoubtedly obliges you to conceive of a purely Spiritual world.

"Thus man himself offers sufficient proof of the two orders,--Matter and Spirit. In him culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite,--two worlds unknown to each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord a perception of their combined being?

Seraphita

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin:

Dr. J. Crichton Browne has given me so striking an account of intense fear in an insane woman, aged thirty-five, that the description though painful ought not to be omitted. When a paroxysm seizes her, she screams out, "This is hell!" "There is a black woman!" "I can't get out!"--and other such exclamations. When thus screaming, her movements are those of alternate tension and tremor. For one instant she clenches her hands, holds her arms out before her in a stiff semi-flexed position; then suddenly bends her body forwards, sways rapidly to and fro, draws her fingers through her hair, clutches at her neck, and tries to tear off her clothes.

Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe:

he would do his endeavour that I should not be wronged, but that he would also help me to a good sober person who was a grave man of his acquaintance, who was a clerk in such business too, though not in their house, whose judgment was good, and whose honesty I might depend upon. 'For,' added he, 'I will answer for him, and for every step he takes; if he wrongs you, madam, of one farthing, it shall lie at my door, I will make it good; and he delights to assist people in such cases--he does it as an act of charity.'

I was a little at a stand in this discourse; but after some pause I told him I had rather have depended upon him, because I had

Moll Flanders

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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

IV. The pamphlet here presented

MORAL EMBLEMS: A COLLECTION OF CUTS AND VERSES

I. See how the children in the print II. Reader, your soul upraise to see III. A PEAK IN DARIEN - Broad-gazing on untrodden lands IV. See in the print how, moved by whim V. Mark, printed on the opposing page

MORAL EMBLEMS: A SECOND COLLECTION OF CUTS AND VERSES

I. With storms a-weather, rocks-a-lee II. The careful angler chose his nook III. The Abbot for a walk went out