Today's Stichomancy for The Rock

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells:

swallowed up in every day. . . .

His mind shifted very suddenly from these large proposals to an entirely different theme. These mental landslips are not unusual when men are thinking hard and wandering. He found himself holding a trial upon himself for Presumptuousness, for setting himself up against the wisdom of the ages, and the decisions of all the established men in the world, for being in short a Presumptuous Sort of Ass. He was judge and jury and prosecutor, but rather inexplicably the defence was conducted in an irregular and undignified way by some inferior stratum of his being.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

Illingworth first. [Goes across room.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Not to-night, Gerald.

GERALD. Lord Illingworth, I want you so much to know my mother.

LORD ILLINGWORTH. With the greatest pleasure. [To MRS. ALLONBY.] I'll be back in a moment. People's mothers always bore me to death. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.

MRS. ALLONBY. No man does. That is his.

LORD ILLINGWORTH. What a delightful mood you are in to-night! [Turns round and goes across with GERALD to MRS. ARBUTHNOT. When he sees her, he starts back in wonder. Then slowly his eyes turn

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac:

I've an eye that cows a fool," said Philippe, giving Monsieur Hochon an atrocious glance that made the old man tremble.

"If they let him walk with you, Maxence must believe he has found some means to win the game," remarked the old miser.

"Oh! Fario is on the watch," said Philippe, "and he is not alone. That Spaniard has discovered one of my old soldiers in the neighborhood of Vatan, a man I once did some service to. Without any one's suspecting it, Benjamin Bourdet is under Fario's orders, who has lent him a horse to get about with."

"If you kill that monster who has corrupted my grandsons, I shall say you have done a good deed."

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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri:

penal code, the French law of 1875, and elsewhere.

And it is just by reason of the enormous expenditure on vast prisons that the grievous and mischievous contrast arises between the comforts provided for murderers and men guilty of arson in their cells and the privations to which the honest poor are exposed in hospitals, poorhouses, town garrets, country hovels, and barracks. One of the most significant results which I noticed at the exhibition of various plans of cells in connection with the Prison Congress at Rome in 1885 was that it demonstrated to the general public how the cellular system treats prisoners (whether before trial or after sentence) better than the poor, who continue