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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

silken-shaded lamp, from which color rather than light came with subdued ampleness.

I saw her eyes settle upon the flowers that I had brought Eliza La Heu.

"How beautiful those are!" she remarked.

"Is there something that you wish?" inquired Miss La Heu, always miraculously sweet.

"Some of your good things for lunch; a very little, if you will be so kind."

I had gone back to my table while the "very little" was being selected, and I felt, in spite of how slightly she counted me, that it would be in- adequate in me to remain completely dumb.

"Mr. Mayrant is still at the Custom House?" I observed.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

knew, the Commonwealth had continued the case, in hope of such contingency.

At noon I left the office and took a veterinarian to see Candida, the injured pony. By one o'clock my first day's duties were performed, and a long Sahara of hot afternoon stretched ahead. McKnight, always glad to escape from the grind, suggested a vaudeville, and in sheer ennui I consented. I could neither ride, drive nor golf, and my own company bored me to distraction.

"Coolest place in town these days," he declared. "Electric fans, breezy songs, airy costumes. And there's Johnson just behind - the coldest proposition in Washington."

The Man in Lower Ten

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tanach:

Job 28: 4 He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; they are forgotten of the foot that passeth by; they hang afar from men, they swing to and fro.

Job 28: 5 As for the earth, out of it cometh bread, and underneath it is turned up as it were by fire.

Job 28: 6 The stones thereof are the place of sapphires, and it hath dust of gold.

Job 28: 7 That path no bird of prey knoweth, neither hath the falcon's eye seen it;

Job 28: 8 The proud beasts have not trodden it, nor hath the lion passed thereby.

Job 28: 9 He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots.

Job 28: 10 He cutteth out channels among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing.

Job 28: 11 He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.

Job 28: 12 But wisdom, where shall it be found? And where is the place of understanding?

Job 28: 13 Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

Job 28: 14 The deep saith: 'It is not in me'; and the sea saith: 'It is not with me.'

The Tanach

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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon:

itself it far surpasses in importance all the others. We have sufficiently studied it in another work; it is therefore needless to deal with it again. We showed, in a previous volume, what an historical race is, and how, its character once formed, it possesses, as the result of the laws of heredity such power that its beliefs, institutions, and arts--in a word, all the elements of its civilisation--are merely the outward expression of its genius. We showed that the power of the race is such that no element can pass from one people to another without undergoing the most profound transformations.[7]

[7] The novelty of this proposition being still considerable and