Today's Stichomancy for Tom Leykis

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

years of wretchedness, the craving for happiness led me by an imperceptible descent to love another woman and make a second home. And do not imagine that I am singular; there are in this city thousands of husbands, all led by various causes to live this twofold life."

"Great God!" cried the Countess. "How heavy is the cross Thou hast laid on me to bear! If the husband Thou hast given me here below in Thy wrath can only be made happy through my death, take me to Thyself!"

"If you had always breathed such admirable sentiments and such devotion, we should be happy yet," said the Count coldly.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis:

two hundred thousand a year to maintain and enlarge it. They received no endowment from state or nation. They wanted to protect their children and they found a way to do it. They based their system of education on the actual needs of men. They know what life is, for they have lived it. In mine and field and factory they had tasted the salty flavor of real things, and they built a school that has this flavor.

The war drove home a lesson that will forever make false education hateful to me. Education in the wrong direction can destroy a nation and wreck the happiness of the world. The German worker was taught that he would get rich, not by patient toil,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon this earth.

On the lapse of Time. -- Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links, it may be objected, that time will not have sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having been effected very slowly through natural selection. It is hardly possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having

On the Origin of Species

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 Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

in the clutches of a hawk.

What could it mean?

I was baffled for an explanation; but with the tarag gone I lost no time in hastening to Dian's side. With a little cry of delight she threw herself into my arms. So lost were we in the ecstasy of reunion that neither of us--to this day--can tell what became of the tarag.

The first thing we were aware of was the presence of a body of Sagoths about us. Gruffly they commanded us to follow them. They led us from the arena and back through the streets of Phutra to the audience chamber

Pellucidar