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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac:

understood my sorrows, as she now understood my joy, with the magical sensitiveness of a harp that obeys the variations of the atmosphere. Human life has glorious moments. Together we walked in silence along the beach. The sky was cloudless, the sea without a ripple; others might have thought them merely two blue surfaces, the one above the other, but we--we who heard without the need of words, we who could evoke between these two infinitudes the illusions that nourish youth, --we pressed each other's hands at every change in the sheet of water or the sheets of air, for we took those slight phenomena as the visible translation of our double thought. Who has never tasted in wedded love that moment of illimitable joy when the soul seems freed

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

up my mind to know Shakespeare in his mother tongue before I die, but that you, Frau Professor, should be already immersed in those wells of English thought!"

"From what I have read," she said, "I do not think they are very deep wells."

He nodded sympathetically.

"No," he answered, "so I have heard...But do not let us embitter our excursion for our little English friend. We will speak of this another time."

"Nu, are we ready?" cried Fritz, who stood, supporting Elsa's elbow in his hand, at the foot of the steps. It was immediately discovered that Karl

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

utilities for carrying pipe and tobacco. His broken-fanged teeth were stained black by betel-nut, the juice of which he spat upon the ground.

As he talked or listened, he made grimaces like a monkey. He said yes by dropping his eyelids and thrusting his chin forward. He spoke with childish arrogance strangely at variance with the subservient position he occupied beneath the veranda. He, with his many followers, was lord and master of Balesuna village. But the white man, without followers, was lord and master of Berande--ay, and on occasion, single-handed, had made himself lord and master of Balesuna village as well. Seelee did not like to remember that

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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare:

[Enter the Clown who searches and falls over the wild man and so carry him away.]

MOUSE. Nay, soft, sir; are you here? a bots on you! I was like to be hanged for not finding you. We would borrow a certain stray king's daughter of you: a wench, a wench, sir, we would have.

MUCEDORUS. A wench of me! I'll make thee eat my sword.

MOUSE. Oh Lord! nay, and you are so lusty, I'll call a cooling card