Today's Stichomancy for Barbara Streisand

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

occurred.

We were gathered in the library, and everybody was deadly dull. Aunt Selina said she had been reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath, and she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card tables were put away and every one sat around and quarreled and was generally nasty, except Bella and Jim, who had gone into the den just after dinner and firmly closed the door.

I think it was just after Max proposed to me. Yes, he proposed to me again that night. He said that Jim's illness had decided him; that any of us might take sick and die, shut in that contaminated atmosphere, and that if he did he wanted it all settled. And

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather:

Johnnie shook his head. `'S a fact, boys,' he said confidentially. `If I take a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!'

His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. `Oh, we'll make it all right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie.'

Molly was Mrs. Gardener's name, of course. `Molly Bawn' was painted in large blue letters on the glossy white sides of the hotel bus, and `Molly' was engraved inside Johnnie's ring and on his watch-case-- doubtless on his heart, too. He was an affectionate little man, and he thought his wife a wonderful woman; he knew that without her he would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man's hotel.

At a word from Kirkpatrick, d'Arnault spread himself out over the piano,

My Antonia

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac:

a value of a hundred thousand crowns; in you, poet--"

"I am a painter," said the lunatic.

"Yes," resumed Gaudissart,--"painter, poet, musician, statesman--and binds itself to pay them over to your family, your heirs, if, by reason of your death, the hopes foundered on your intellectual capital should be overthrown for you personally. The payment of the premium is all that is required to protect--"

"The money-box," said the lunatic, sharply interrupting him.

"Ah! naturally; yes. I see that Monsieur understands business."

"Yes," said the madman. "I established the Territorial Bank in the Rue des Fosses-Montmartre at Paris in 1798."

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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad:

fading lines of the coast. There are no features to this land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the sun sets in a blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and the dark, low shores trend towards each other. And in the great silence the deep, faint booming of the big guns being tested at Shoeburyness hangs about the Nore - a historical spot in the keeping of one of England's appointed guardians.

XXXI.

The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human

The Mirror of the Sea