Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Gayheart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us, Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding, Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . . . . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . .My first wife's voice Scattered these ghosts. 'Oh nothing--nothing much-- Just wondering where we'd be two years from now, And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity, And pity to echoed love. And one more evening Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.

And, as it is with this, so too with all things.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

important business and were in a hurry. It was among the smaller varieties that Dorothy hoped to spy the gold and silver and bronze fishes. She had an idea the three would keep together, being companions now as they were in their natural forms, but such a multitude of fishes constantly passed, the scene shifting every moment, that she was not sure she would notice them even if they appeared in view. Her eyes couldn't look in all directions and the fishes she sought might be on the other side of the dome, or far away in the lake.

"P'raps, because they were afraid of Coo-ee-oh,

Glinda of Oz

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville:

are interested in confining him by certain regulations which he cannot evade.

Chapter XIII: Government Of The Democarcy In America - Part II Instability Of The Administration In The United States

In America the public acts of a community frequently leave fewer traces than the occurrences of a family - Newspapers the only historical remains -Instability of the administration prejudicial to the art of government.

The authority which public men possess in America is so brief, and they are so soon commingled with the ever-changing population of the country, that the acts of a community

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 Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy:

"There were only two travellers in my compartment: an old woman with her husband, neither of them very talkative; and even they got out at one of the stations, leaving me all alone. I was like a beast in a cage. Now I jumped up and approached the window, now I began to walk back and forth, staggering as if I hoped to make the train go faster by my efforts, and the car with its seats and its windows trembled continually, as ours does now."

And Posdnicheff rose abruptly, took a few steps, and sat down again.

"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid of railway carriages. Fear seizes

The Kreutzer Sonata