Today's Stichomancy for Lucille Ball

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

So much delights me, nor wave-smitten beach, Nor streams that race adown their bouldered beds.

MENALCAS First this frail hemlock-stalk to you I give, Which taught me "Corydon with love was fired For fair Alexis," ay, and this beside, "Who owns the flock?- Meliboeus?"

MOPSUS

But take you This shepherd's crook, which, howso hard he begged, Antigenes, then worthy to be loved,

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

free to choose between living with him and without him.

Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus vivendi to Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him.

Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party.

The Woodlanders

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Quickly she loosened her riding skirt and tossed it aside--it was a heavy handicap to successful travel in the trees. Her boots and stockings followed the skirt, for the bare sole of the human foot does not slip upon dry or even wet bark as does the hard leather of a boot. She would have liked to discard her riding breeches also, but the motherly admonitions of My Dear had convinced Meriem that it was not good form to go naked through the world.

At her hip hung a hunting knife. Her rifle was still in its boot at her pony's withers. Her revolver she had not brought.

The kid was still bleating as Meriem started rapidly in its

The Son of Tarzan

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 Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum:

who it was they whispered to the owlets nestling near them that it was only Santa Claus carrying toys to the children. It is strange how much those mother owls know.

Claus stopped at some of the scattered farmhouses and climbed down the chimneys to leave presents for the babies. Soon after he reached a village and worked merrily for an hour distributing playthings among the sleeping little ones. Then away again he went, signing his joyous carol:

"Now away we go O'er the gleaming snow, While the deer run swift and free! For to girls and boys

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus