Today's Stichomancy for P Diddy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

eyed man saw him and stepped quickly behind the huge stove which had not as yet been taken down for the summer. Bridge made his purchases, the volume of which required a large gunny-sack for transportation, and while he was thus occupied the fox-eyed man clung to his coign of vantage, himself unnoticed by the pur- chaser. When Bridge departed the other followed him, keeping in the shadow of the trees which bordered the street. Around the edge of town and down a road which led southward the two went until Bridge passed through a broken fence and halted beside an abandoned mill.

The Oakdale Affair

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson:

the building when great seas struck it in a certain direction, about high-water mark. On this occasion the sprays were again observed to wet the balcony, and even to come over the parapet wall into the interior of the light-room.

[Thursday, 23rd Aug.]

The wind being at W.S.W., and the weather more moderate, both the tender and the SMEATON got to their moorings on the 23rd, when all hands were employed in transporting the sash- frames from on board of the SMEATON to the rock. In the act of setting up one of these frames upon the bridge, it was unguardedly suffered to lose its balance, and in saving it

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac:

deference to Monsieur Camusot's request that he should deal as leniently as possible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen, through the dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark vault opposite the Tour d'Argent, thus avoiding the exhibition of a young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners airing themselves in the yard. It will be for the reader to judge whether the aspect of the promenade was not such as to appeal deeply to a poet's soul.

The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour d'Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly shows from the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor called the Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie

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 Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale:

II (Written in a copy of "La Vita Nuova". For M. C. S.)

If you were Lady Beatrice And I the Florentine, I'd never waste my time like this -- If you were Lady Beatrice I'd woo and then demand a kiss, Nor weep like Dante here, I ween, If you were Lady Beatrice And I the Florentine.

III