Today's Stichomancy for Alanis Morissette

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land. Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the

Walden

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:

GLOSTER. Madam, I am protector of the realm, And, at his pleasure, will resign my place.

SUFFOLK. Resign it then, and leave thine insolence. Since thou wert king--as who is king but thou?-- The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack; The Dauphin hath prevail'd beyond the seas; And all the peers and nobles of the realm Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.

CARDINAL.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac:

Bianchon, who was with Desplein all through his last illness, dares not affirm to this day that the great surgeon died an atheist. Will not those who believe like to fancy that the humble Auvergnat came to open the gate of Heaven to his friend, as he did that of the earthly temple on whose pediment we read the words--"A grateful country to its great men."

PARIS, January 1836.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot

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 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

gone for a short walk by a path through the neighbour- ing cornfields. It was dusk when Oak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and met her returning, quite pensively, as he thought. The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was quite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side. Two persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and Oak stood aside to let her pass. "Oh, is it Gabriel?" she said. "You are taking a walk too. Good-night."

Far From the Madding Crowd