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 The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:

seemed to concentrate itself in the eyes; they turned towards beauty as the sunflower turns towards the sun, opening wider and wider until one saw nothing but the eyes.

She was dressed always in clinging dresses of Eastern silk, and as she was so small, and her long black hair hung straight down her back, you might have taken her for a child. She spoke little, and in a low voice, like gentle music; and she seemed, wherever she was, to be alone.

Through that soul I seemed to touch and take hold upon the East. And first there was the wisdom of the East. I have never known any one who seemed to exist on such "large draughts of

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov:

appeared for an instant amidst the sea foam, and I saw no more of her.

I found the half of an old oar at the bottom of the boat, and somehow or other, after lengthy efforts, I made fast to the harbour. Making my way along the shore towards my hut, I involun- tarily gazed in the direction of the spot where, on the previous night, the blind boy had awaited the nocturnal mariner. The moon was already rolling through the sky, and it seemed to me that somebody in white was sitting on the shore.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley:

the "bizarreries" which these very zoophytes present in their classification?

You go down to any shore after a gale of wind, and pick up a few delicate little sea-ferns. You have two in your hand, which probably look to you, even under a good pocket magnifier, identical or nearly so. (1) But you are told to your surprise, that however like the dead horny polypidoms which you hold may be, the two species of animal which have formed them are at least as far apart in the scale of creation as a quadruped is from a fish. You see in some Musselburgh dredger's boat the phosphorescent sea-pen (unknown in England), a living feather, of the look and consistency of a

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 Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire, The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts, And ramblers' donkey drinking from the ruts: - Long ere you trace how deviously it leads, Back from man's chimneys and the bleating meads To the woodland shadow, to the sylvan hush, When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush - Back from the sun and bustle of the vale To where the great voice of the nightingale Fills all the forest like a single room, And all the banks smell of the golden broom;