Today's Stichomancy for Madonna

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

Henri carried him in and laid him in the little passage, very reverently. Then he went below.

"Where is Rene?" Sara Lee asked from the darkness.

"A foolish boy," said Henri, a catch in his throat. "He is, I think, watching these fiends of the air, from some shelter."

"There is no shelter," shivered the girl.

He groped for her hand in the darkness, and so they stood, hand in hand, like two children, waiting for what might come.

It was not until the thing was over that he told her. He had gone up first and so that she would not happen on his silent figure unwarned, had carried Rene to the open upper floor, where he lay, singularly

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

lying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he went away." "I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to send Emil's Christmas box?" "It ought to have gone before this. I'll have to send it by mail now, to get it there in time." Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from

O Pioneers!

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane:

lines containing the most subtile distinctions between right and wrong, the gallery was immediately aware if the actor meant wickedness, and denounced him accordingly.

The last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed with tyrannical purposes, imperturbable amid suffering.

Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of the melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked. The theatre made her think. She wondered if the culture and refinement

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

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 Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock:

To make her invocation: She marked not that the rain-swoll'n flood Was islanding her station. The tempest mocked her feeble cry: No saint his aid would give her: The flood swelled high and yet more high, And swept her down the river.

Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight, When hollow winds are blowing, The shadow of that maiden bright Glides by the dark stream's flowing.