Today's Stichomancy for Robert A. Heinlein

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

you unlimited power. I bow to you myself as the god of the family."

The father carried his son into the lordly chamber where the mother's sad existence had been spent. Etienne turned away and leaned against the window from which his mother was wont to make him signals announcing the departure of his persecutor, who now, without his knowing why, had become his slave, like those gigantic genii which the power of a fairy places at the order of a young prince. That fairy was Feudality. Beholding once more the melancholy room where his eyes were accustomed to contemplate the ocean, tears came into those eyes; recollections of his long misery, mingled with melodious memories of the pleasures he had had in the only love that was granted to him,

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

Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?' What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts And he that loos'd them forth their brazen caves, And bid them blow towards England's blessed shore, Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock? Yet Aeolus would not be a murtherer, But left that hateful office unto thee. The pretty-vaulting sea refus'd to drown me, Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown'd on shore, With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness. The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower:

O mor cruel than eny beste, Hou hast thou holden thi beheste Which thou unto my Soster madest? O thou, which alle love ungladest, 5680 And art ensample of alle untrewe, Nou wolde god mi Soster knewe, Of thin untrouthe, hou that it stod!" And he than as a Lyon wod With hise unhappi handes stronge Hire cauhte be the tresses longe, With whiche he bond ther bothe hire armes,

Confessio Amantis

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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine:

prevalent enough up here right now. Send up that bunch of keys and we'll bring your meat to you fast enough."

"What's that? What's that?" The outlaw chief pushed his way through the dense mob at the door and reached the stairway.

"He won't let us up," growled one of them.

"Who won't?" demanded Bannister sharply, and at once came leaping up the stairs.

"Nothing doing," drawled Frisco, and tossed him over the railing on to the heads of his followers below.

They carried Bannister into the open air, for his head had struck the newel-post in his descent. This gave the defense a few