Today's Stichomancy for Sarah Jessica Parker

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac:

hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification, and preserved the watchful silence of a man who has been duped.

"/Che avete, signor/?" Francesca asked with simplicity. "Does our happiness sadden you?"

"Your husband is a young man," he whispered in her ear.

She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe was still more puzzled.

"He is but sixty-five, at your service," said she; "but I can assure you that even that is something--to be thankful for!"

"I do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred as this, of which you yourself prescribed the conditions."

Albert Savarus

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov:

meanwhile he went for a walk with Varinka almost every day -- possibly he thought that this was necessary in his position -- and came to see me to talk about family life. And in all probability in the end he would have proposed to her, and would have made one of those unnecessary, stupid marriages such as are made by thousands among us from being bored and having nothing to do, if it had not been for a _kolossalische scandal_. I must mention that Varinka's brother, Kovalenko, detested Byelikov from the first day of their acquaintance, and could not endure him.

" 'I don't understand,' he used to say to us, shrugging his shoulders --'I don't understand how you can put up with that

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

they are slaves do they less than free men need the lure of hope and happy expectation,[21] that they may willingly stand to their posts.

[21] "The lure of happy prospects." See "Horsmanship," iii. 1.

It was an excellent saying of his who named husbandry "the mother and nurse of all the arts," for while agriculture prospers all other arts like are vigorous and strong, but where the land is forced to remain desert,[22] the spring that feeds the other arts is dried up; they dwindle, I had almost said, one and all, by land and sea.

[22] Or, "lie waste and barren as the blown sea-sand."

These utterances drew from Critobulus a comment:

Socrates (he said), for my part I agree with all you say; only, one

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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton:

whole plan will fall through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to Ursula."

Susy's smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn's sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's uncontrollable cry: "The most wonderful thing of all is not