Today's Stichomancy for Lizzie Borden

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters:

And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er, I weary for that land divine, Where we were born, where you and I Shall meet our dearest, when we die; From suffering and corruption free, Restored into the Deity."

"Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child! And wiser than thy sire; And worldly tempests, raging wild, Shall strengthen thy desire-- Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare:

Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance, Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk; But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers; With gentle conference, soft and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limp? O sland'rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. O! let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt.

KATHERINA.

The Taming of the Shrew

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

And rush through the dark, and fill the night With a slowly dying clamor of sound. There, where the great walls crowd the stars, There, by the black wind-riven walls, In a grove of twisted leafless trees. . . . Who are these pilgrims, who are these, These three, the one of whom stands upright, While one lies weeping and one of them crawls? The face that he turned was a wounded face, I heard the dripping of blood on stones. . . . Hooves had trampled and torn this place,

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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

after the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village lights.

Day after day Mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and day after day he would see Gray Brother's back a mile and a half away across the plain (so he knew that Shere Khan had not come back), and day after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noises round him, and dreaming of old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had made a false step with his lame paw up in the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would have heard him in those long, still mornings.

At last a day came when he did not see Gray Brother at the

The Jungle Book