Today's Stichomancy for Chris Elliott

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott:

not so cruelly. It would be but blasphemous hypocrisy to utter with my lips the words which every throb of my heart protests against. They would open the earth and give to light the wasted form of my sister, the bloody form of my murdered brother. Forgive him?--never, never!'

"'Great God!' cried the old man, holding up his hands, 'is it thus the worms which Thou hast called out of dust obey the commands of their Maker? Farewell, proud and unforgiving woman. Exult that thou hast added to a death in want and pain the agonies of religious despair; but never again mock Heaven by petitioning for the pardon which thou hast refused to grant.'

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare:

Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd.

O hard-believing love! how strange it seems 985 Not to believe, and yet too credulous; Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes; Despair and hope make thee ridiculous: 988 The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely, In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought, Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame; 992 It was not she that call'd him all to naught, Now she adds honours to his hateful name;

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:

Those who chose to be idle, certainly might."

"Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage one. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. It is wonderful how many families I have been the means of supplying in that way. I am always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means; and it was but the other day that I recommended another young person, who was merely accidentally mentioned to me,

Pride and Prejudice

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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske:

and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under him and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype not only of the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pry and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or expand himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale,[22] whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom the fisherman releases from the bottle.

Myths and Myth-Makers