Today's Stichomancy for Tupac Shakur

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw:

the place by which the hemlock grew and there he saw Gertrude sitting on the low earthen wall that separated the field from the road. Her straw bag, with her scissors in it, lay beside her. Her fingers were interlaced, and her hands rested, palms downwards, on her knee. Her expression was rather vacant, and so little suggestive of any serious emotion that Erskine laughed as he alighted close to her.

"Are you tired?" he said.

"No," she replied, not startled, and smiling mechanically--an unusual condescension on her part.

"Indulging in a day-dream?"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes:

thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech?

[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands.]

This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing:

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

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

merveilleux. Il peut tout faire . . . C'est etrange qu'il se soit tue, le jeune Syrien. Je le regrette. Oui, je le regrette beaucoup. Car il etait beau. Il etait meme tres beau. Il avait des yeux tres langoureux. Je me rappelle que je l'ai vu regardant Salome d'une facon langoureuse. En effet, j'ai trouve qu'il l'avait un peu trop regardee.

HERODIAS. Il y en a d'autres qui la regardent trop.

HERODE. Son pere etait roi. Je l'ai chasse de son royaume. Et de sa mere qui etait reine vous avez fait une esclave, Herodias. Ainsi, il etait ici comme un hote. C'etait e cause de cela que je l'avais fait capitaine. Je regrette qu'il soit mort . . . Enfin,

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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac:

days.

"Mother! you are too beautiful to die--life and health are coming back to you!" cried Madeleine.

"Dear daughter, I shall live--in thee," she answered, smiling.

Then followed heart-rending embraces of the mother and her children. Monsieur de Mortsauf kissed his wife upon her brow. She colored when she saw me.

"Dear Felix," she said, "this is, I think, the only grief that I shall ever have caused you. Forget all that I may have said,--I, a poor creature much beside myself." She held out her hand; I took it and kissed it. Then she said, with her chaste and gracious smile, "As in

The Lily of the Valley