Today's Stichomancy for Will Smith

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare:

KING EDWARD. hast thou pen, ink, and paper ready, Lodowick?

LODOWICK. Ready, my liege.

KING EDWARD. Then in the summer arbor sit by me, Make it our counsel house or cabinet: Since green our thoughts, green be the conventicle, Where we will ease us by disburdening them. Now, Lodowick, invocate some golden Muse, To bring thee hither an enchanted pen,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft:

you; he is my husband." "My God!" exclaimed the woman as she flounced out and banged to the door. On going upstairs, I heard what had taken place: but, as we were there, and did not mean to leave that night, we did not disturb ourselves. On our ordering tea, the landlady sent word back to say that we must take it in the kitchen, or in our bed-room, as she had no other room for "niggers." We replied that we were not particular, and that they could sent it up to our room,--which they did.

After the pro-slavery persons who were staying

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett:

sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but now they pertained only to humble compounds brewed at intervals with molasses or vinegar or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs. Todd's kitchen stove. They were dispensed to suffering neighbors, who usually came at night as if by stealth, bringing their own ancient-looking vials to be filled. One nostrum was called the Indian remedy, and its price was but fifteen cents; the whispered directions could be heard as customers passed the windows. With most remedies the purchaser was allowed to depart unadmonished from

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 Philebus by Plato:

retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such as truth, justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they have become sacred to us,--'the word of God' written on the human heart: to no other words can the same associations be attached. We cannot explain them adequately on principles of utility; in attempting to do so we rob them of their true character. We give them a meaning often paradoxical and distorted, and generally weaker than their signification in common language. And as words influence men's thoughts, we fear that the hold of morality may also be weakened, and the sense of duty impaired, if virtue and vice are explained only as the qualities which do or do not contribute to the pleasure of the world. In that very expression we seem to detect a