Today's Stichomancy for Alan Moore

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

know. The point is that I can help you - it appears that nobody else can; and I will tell you how I propose to do it. I will give the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will return the compliment by allowing my servant to ride one of your horses.'

I thought he would have sprung at my throat.

'You have always the alternative before you: to wait here for the arrival of papa,' I added.

And that settled him. He cast another haggard look down the road, and capitulated.

'I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you,' he said, with an ill grace.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:

That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look. I bide my time, and it shall come at length, When, with a Titan's energy and strength, I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O, The word shall suffer when I let them go!

Farquharson Harris

MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.

The Devil's Dictionary

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister:

The last letter that I shall give is from an American citizen of English birth.

"As a boy at school in England, I was taught the history of the American Revolution as J. R. Green presents it in his Short History of the English People. The gist of this record, as you doubtless recollect, is that George III being engaged in the attempt to destroy what there then was of political freedom and representative government in England, used the American situation as a means to that end; that the English people, in so far as their voice could make itself heard, were solidly against both his English and American policy, and that the triumph of America contributed in no small measure to the salvation of those institutions by which the

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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad:

snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as it were. It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character that the answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly tone. Some commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound of your voice as an injury and an insult.

But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness all day - and perhaps half the night - becomes a

The Mirror of the Sea