Today's Stichomancy for Ray Bradbury

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

For all sighs and groans of anguish

Thou to-day in joy hast drown'd.

SOLO.

Brief must be my explanation,

For I really have done nought. Free from trouble and vexation,

I a landlord's business bought. There I've done, with all due ardour,

All that duty order'd me; Each one ask'd me for the larder,

And there was no scarcity.

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

would make me about one-half the man Sir Walter was for application and driving the dull pen. Of the merit we shall not talk; but I don't think Davie is WITHOUT merit.

MARCH 12TH.

And I have this day triumphantly finished 15 chapters, 100 pages - being exactly one-half (as near as anybody can guess) of DAVID BALFOUR; the book to be about a fifth as long again (altogether) as TREASURE ISLAND: could I but do the second half in another month! But I can't, I fear; I shall have some belated material arriving by next mail, and must go again at the History. Is it not characteristic of my broken

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgated, and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the mine. Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business in San Francisco.

I give these two versions as I got them. But I place little reliance on either, my belief in history having been greatly shaken. For it chanced that I had come to dwell in Silverado at a critical hour; great events in its history were about to happen - did happen, as I am led to believe; nay, and it will be seen that I played a part in that revolution myself. And

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 An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw:

proletariat, beginning with a nucleus of those formerly employed in export trades, with their multiplying progeny, will be out of employment permanently. They will demand access to the land and machinery to produce for themselves. They will be refused. They will break a few windows and be dispersed with a warning to their leaders. They will burn a few houses and murder a policeman or two, and then an example will be made of the warned. They will revolt, and be shot down with machine-guns--emigrated--exterminated anyhow and everyhow; for the proprietary classes have no idea of any other means of dealing with the full claims of labor. You yourself, though you