Today's Stichomancy for Oscar Wilde

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry:

me. I know a gentleman when I see him. And now let's have some more beer.'

"In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and snores. Andy looks at me and says: 'I reckon I'd better stay with him for five minutes or so, in case the waiter comes in.'

"I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And then I came back and sat down at the table.

"'Andy,' says I, 'I can't do it. It's too much like swearing off taxes. I can't go off with this man's money without doing something to earn it like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle of eczema lotion in his pocket to make it look more like a square

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon:

table.[7] The plainest answer to the question asked--that is all you need expect to hear from their lips.

[4] See Cic. "pro Coelio," 5.

[5] See Plat. "Charmid." 159 B; Jowett, "Plato," I. 15.

[6] Longinus, {peri ups}, iv. 4, reading {ophthalmois} for {thalamois}, says: "Yet why speak of Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato, the very demigods of literature, though they had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forget themselves in the pursuit of such pretty conceits? The former in his account of the Spartan Polity has these words: 'Their voice you would no more hear, than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

from different directions, as the great bulls crashed through the trees in answer to the summons of their fellow.

The black man halted at the first cry and looked about him. He could see nothing, but he knew the voice of the hairy tree men whom he and his kind feared, not alone because of the strength and ferocity of the savage beings, but as well through a superstitious terror engendered by the manlike appearance of the apes.

But Bulabantu was no coward. He heard the apes all about him; he knew that escape was probably impossible, so he stood his ground, his spear ready in his hand and a war cry

The Jungle Tales of Tarzan

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 Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

denizens of the jungle made hideous the hours of darkness.

They slept upon litters of jungle grasses, and for covering at night Jane Porter had only an old ulster that belonged to Clayton, the same garment that he had worn upon that memorable trip to the Wisconsin woods. Clayton had erected a frail partition of boughs to divide their arboreal shelter into two rooms--one for the girl and the other for Monsieur Thuran and himself.

From the first the Russian had exhibited every trait of his true character--selfishness, boorishness, arrogance, cowardice, and lust. Twice had he and Clayton come to

The Return of Tarzan