Today's Stichomancy for Lucy Liu

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James:

so that there grew up in him an absurd desire to put it to some better test. Save in so far as some other poor chance might help him, such a test could be only to meet her afresh at church. Left to himself he would have gone to church the very next afternoon, just for the curiosity of seeing if he should find her there. But he wasn't left to himself, a fact he discovered quite at the last, after he had virtually made up his mind to go. The influence that kept him away really revealed to him how little to himself his Dead EVER left him. He went only for THEM - for nothing else in the world.

The force of this revulsion kept him away ten days: he hated to

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells:

"It's amazing how every human quarrel draws one in to take sides. Life is one long struggle against the incidental. I can feel my anger gathering against the Government here in spite of my reason. I want to go and expostulate. I have a ridiculous idea that I ought to go off to Lord Glindividuals into the roadway and then a derisive shouting. Nobody had been hit. The soldiers had fired in the air.

"But thiadstone or Botha and expostulate. . . . What good would it do? They move in the magic circles of their own limitations, an official, a politician--how would they put it?-- ‘with many things to consider. . . .'

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

to mantle over a glass of bright Burgundy their conversation is become just like the Spa water they drink which has all the Pertness and flatulence of champaine without its spirit or Flavour.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. But what are they to do who love Play better than wine----

CARELESS. True--there's Harry diets himself--for gaming and is now under a hazard Regimen.

CHARLES. Then He'll have the worst of it--what you wouldn't train a horse for the course by keeping him from corn--For my Part egad I am never so successful as when I'm a little--merry--let me throw on a Bottle of Champaine and I never lose--at least I never feel

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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac:

weep with. My poor Cesarine, I--"

"Now, there you go!" cried Cesar; "you will take away from me the courage I need."

"Forgive me, dear friend," said Constance, taking his hand, and pressing it with a tenderness which went to the heart of the poor man. "I do wrong. Misfortune has come; I will be silent, resigned, strong to bear it. No, you shall never hear a complaint from me." She threw herself into his arms, weeping, and whispering, "Courage, dear friend, courage! I will have courage for both, if necessary."

"My oil, wife,--my oil will save us!"

"May God help us!" said Constance.

Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau