Today's Stichomancy for William T. Sherman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris:

looking fellow of thirty, just beginning to show the effects of a certain amount of dissipation in the little puffs under the eyes and the faint blueness of the temples. The sudden death of his father for which event Sargeant was still mourning, had left him in such position that his monthly income was about five times as large as Condy's salary. The two had supper together, and Sargeant proposed the theatre. "No, no; I've got to work to-night," asserted Condy. After dinner, while they were smoking their cigars in a window of

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving:

of a few Sundays, no less than five French bonnets, precisely like those of the Miss Lambs, parading about Little Britain.

I still had my hopes that all this folly would gradually die away; that the Lambs might move out of the neighborhood; might die, or might run away with attorneys' apprentices; and that quiet and simplicity might be again restored to the community. But unluckily a rival power arose. An opulent oilman died, and left a widow with a large jointure and a family of buxom daughters. The young ladies had long been repining in secret at the parsimony of a prudent father, which kept down all their elegant aspirings. Their ambition, being now no longer

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

see him in the room, so secure and happy. How hungry she had been for the nearness of someone like that--who knew nothing at all about her--and made no demands--but just lived. Viola ran over to the table and put her arms round the jar of hyacinths.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" she cried--burying her head in the flowers--and sniffing greedily at the scent. Over the leaves she looked at the man and laughed.

"You are a funny little thing," said he lazily.

"Why? Because I love flowers?"

"I'd far rather you loved other things," said the strange man slowly. She broke off a little pink petal and smiled at it.

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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy:

brother, who was so strange and remote from him, but at the same time so near and so akin.

FET, STRAKHOF, GAY

"WHAT'S this saber doing here?" asked a young guardsman, Lieutenant Afanásyi Afanásyevitch Fet, of the footman one day as he entered the hall of Iván Sergéyevitch Turgénieff's flat in St. Petersburg in the middle of the fifties. "It is Count Tolstoy's saber; he is asleep in the drawing-room. And Iván Sergéyevitch is in his study having breakfast," replied Zalchar.