Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Romijn

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne:

at three in the morning, the next I was in front of the Golden Cross at midday. At first I was dazzled, and covered my eyes, and there didn't seem the smallest change; the roar of the Strand and the roar of the reef were like the same: hark to it now, and you can hear the cabs and buses rolling and the streets resound! And then at last I could look about, and there was the old place, and no mistake! With the statues in the square, and St Martin's- in-the-Fields, and the bobbies, and the sparrows, and the hacks; and I can't tell you what I felt like. I felt like crying, I believe, or dancing, or jumping clean over the Nelson Column. I was like a fellow caught up out of Hell and flung down into the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

He will give to you the triumph!" Then he smiled, and said: "To-morrow Is the last day of your conflict, Is the last day of your fasting. You will conquer and o'ercome me; Make a bed for me to lie in, Where the rain may fall upon me, Where the sun may come and warm me; Strip these garments, green and yellow, Strip this nodding plumage from me, Lay me in the earth, and make it

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy:

ing," while he notes that the buds are swelling on the lilacs, and "the birds no longer sing at ran- dom," but have begun to converse.

But though such allusions abound in his diary and private correspondence, we must turn to "The Cossacks," and "Conjugal Happiness" for the exquisitely elaborated rural studies, which give those early romances their fresh idyllic charm.

What is interesting to note is that this artistic freshness and joy in Nature coexisted with acute intermittent attacks of spiritual lassitude. In

The Forged Coupon

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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe:

new scene or prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is all enclosed, and grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge- rows; the country rich, fertile, and populous; the towns and houses standing thick and being large and full of inhabitants, and those inhabitants fully employed in the richest and most valuable manufacture in the world--viz., the English clothing, as well the medley or mixed clothing as whites, as well for the home trade as the foreign trade, of which I shall take leave to be very particular in my return through the west and north part of Wiltshire in the latter part of this work.

In my return to my western progress, I passed some little part of