Today's Stichomancy for Voltaire

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister:

without slip or falter.

Those were strange rehearsals of Il Trovatore upon this California shore. For the Padre looked to Gaston to say when they went too fast or too slow, and to correct their emphasis. And since it was hot, the little Erard piano was carried each day out into the mission garden. There, in the cloisters among the jessamine, the orange blossoms, the oleanders, in the presence of the round yellow hills and the blue triangle of sea, the Miserere was slowly learned. The Mexicans and Indians gathered, swarthy and black-haired, around the tinkling instrument that Felipe played; and presiding over them were young Gaston and the pale Padre, walking up and down the paths, beating time or singing now one part and now another. And

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil:

Five herds, five bleating flocks, his pastures fill'd; His lands a hundred yoke of oxen till'd.

Thus, while in equal scales their fortune stood The Fury bath'd them in each other's blood; Then, having fix'd the fight, exulting flies, And bears fulfill'd her promise to the skies. To Juno thus she speaks: "Behold! It is done, The blood already drawn, the war begun; The discord is complete; nor can they cease The dire debate, nor you command the peace. Now, since the Latian and the Trojan brood

Aeneid

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair:

yourself up so much--"

"I am going to take care of myself," he said. "I realize that it is necessary. I shall be all right--the doctor assured me there was no doubt of it, so you are not to distress yourself. But meantime, here is the trouble: I don't think it would be right for me to marry until I am perfectly well."

Henriette gave an exclamation of dismay.

"I am sure we should put it off," he went on, "it would be only fair to you."

"But, George!" she protested. "Surely it can't be that serious!"

"We ought to wait," he said. "You ought not to take the chance

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 Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft:

you that at his own expense he fitted out a vessel, and established himself at Borneo, where he soon acquired so great [an] ascendancy over the native Rajah, that he insisted on resigning to him the government of his province of Sarawak. Here, with only three European companions, by moral and intellectual force alone, he succeeded in suppressing piracy and civil war among the natives and opened a trade with the interior of Borneo which promises great advantages to England. . . . Everybody here has the INFLUENZA--a right-down influenza, that sends people to their beds. Those who have triumphed at their exemption in the evening, wake up perhaps in the morning full of aches in every limb, and scoff no longer. . . .