Today's Stichomancy for Michael York

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson:

the arts, and the drama in particular, that I cannot refrain from saying 'Thank you,' for your paper. In my answer to Mr. James, in the December LONGMAN, you may see that I have merely touched, I think in a parenthesis, on the drama; but I believe enough was said to indicate our agreement in essentials.

Wishing you power and health to further enunciate and to act upon these principles, believe me, dear sir, yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. 4, 1885.

DEAR S. C., - I am on my feet again, and getting on my boots to do

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

Who are not lonely, having died.

Red Maples

In the last year I have learned How few men are worth my trust; I have seen the friend I loved Struck by death into the dust, And fears I never knew before Have knocked and knocked upon my door -- "I shall hope little and ask for less," I said, "There is no happiness."

I have grown wise at last -- but how

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson:

'This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man; Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.' Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon

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 Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells:

and banged about the sky at him, was an amazing and perhaps a culminating exercise of his intelligence and his intellectual courage. The air of 'Nunc Dimittis' sounds in same of these writings. 'The great things are discovered,' wrote Gerald Brown in his summary of the nineteenth century. 'For us there remains little but the working out of detail.' The spirit of the seeker was still rare in the world; education was unskilled, unstimulating, scholarly, and but little valued, and few people even then could have realised that Science was still but the flimsiest of trial sketches and discovery scarcely beginning. No one seems to have been afraid of science and its possibilities.

The Last War: A World Set Free