Today's Stichomancy for Moby

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett:

ashore. Such is the power of contrast; for the village was so still that I could hear the shy whippoorwills singing that night as I lay awake in my downstairs bedroom, and the scent of Mrs. Todd's herb garden under the window blew in again and again with every gentle rising of the seabreeze.

XII

A Strange Sail

EXCEPT FOR a few stray guests, islanders or from the inland country, to whom Mrs. Todd offered the hospitalities of a single meal, we were quite by ourselves all summer; and when there were signs of invasion, late in July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft:

and the antarctic continent. Other charts - and most significantly one in connection with the founding fifty million years ago of the vast dead city around us - showed all the present continents well differentiated. And in the latest discoverable specimen - dating perhaps from the Pliocene Age - the approximate world of today appeared quite clearly despite the linkage of Alaska with Siberia, of North America with Europe through Greenland, and of South America with the antarctic continent through Graham Land. In the Carboniferous map the whole globe-ocean floor and rifted land mass alike - bore symbols of the Old Ones’ vast stone cities, but in the later charts the gradual recession toward the antarctic

At the Mountains of Madness

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne:

Pitman is staunch, there's nothing to do but find a venal doctor; and that ought to be simple enough in a place like London. By all accounts the town's alive with them. It wouldn't do, of course, to advertise for a corrupt physician; that would be impolitic. No, I suppose a fellow has simply to spot along the streets for a red lamp and herbs in the window, and then you go in and--and--and put it to him plainly; though it seems a delicate step.'

He was near home now, after many devious wanderings, and turned up John Street. As he thrust his latchkey in the lock, another mortifying reflection struck him to the heart.

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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling:

Woe for the Baron and his knights so strong, When the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along! He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall, And Iron - Cold Iron - was master of it all!

Yet his King spake kindly (Oh, how kind a Lord!) 'What if I release thee now and give thee back thy sword?' 'Nay!' said the Baron, 'mock not at my fall, For Iron - Cold Iron - is master of men all.'

'Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown - Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.' 'As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,