Today's Stichomancy for P Diddy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac:

minister. I know his modesty well enough to be certain he will not contradict me when I say that I doubt his election to the post of deputy." [Laughter.] "I have come to this meeting to oppose a course which I regard as fatal to our arrondissement. Charles Keller belongs to the court, they say to me. Well, so much the better! we shall not have to pay the costs of his political apprenticeship; he knows the affairs of the country; he knows parliamentary necessities; he is much nearer being a statesman than my friend Simon, who will not pretend to have made himself a Pitt or a Talleyrand in a little town like Arcis--"

"Danton went from it!" cried Colonel Giguet, furious at Achille's

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac:

"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to take her into custody? Is it best to question her?"

The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,--

"Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid evidently knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there."

The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.

"Madame--" he said.

Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.

"It was you," he whispered, stooping to her ear, "who killed your husband."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

"His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch."

It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you don't accuse HIM--"

"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody."

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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter:

this extreme view set in, and of late years it has been the popular cue (largely, it must be said, among "armchair" travelers and explorers) to represent the religious rites and customs of primitive folk as a senseless mass of superstitions, and the early man as quite devoid of decent feeling and intelligence. Again, when the study of religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up--say in the earlier part of last century-- there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun--unless indeed (if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod,

Pagan and Christian Creeds