Today's Stichomancy for Nick Lachey

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri:

Italian penal code, in spite of its progressive aim, had not the courage in 1889 to adopt them frankly; and in the definitive text, as in the ministerial draft, it took refuge in an eclectic arrangement which has already met with a crowd of obstacles, due to the vagueness of the principles inspiring the code.

These criminal lunatic asylums ought to be of two kinds, differing in their discipline, one for the insane authors of serious and dangerous crimes, such as homicide, incendiarism, rape, and the like; and the other for slighter crimes, such as petty theft, violent language, outrages on public decency, and the like. For

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters:

In famished troops will fly.

"And why should we be glad at all? The leaf is hardly green, Before a token of its fall Is on the surface seen!"

Now, whether it were really so, I never could be sure; But as in fit of peevish woe, I stretched me on the moor,

A thousand thousand gleaming fires Seemed kindling in the air;

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him. But he sees the human heart Of God meanwhile, and in God's hand has weighed Your squeamish and emasculate crusade Against the grim dominion of his art.

Never until we conquer the uncouth Connivings of our shamed indifference (We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth

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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde:

for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards,