Today's Stichomancy for Aretha Franklin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde:

the critic is he who exhibits to us a work of art in a form different from that of the work itself, and the employment of a new material is a critical as well as a creative element. Sculpture, too, has its critic, who may be either the carver of a gem, as he was in Greek days, or some painter like Mantegna, who sought to reproduce on canvas the beauty of plastic line and the symphonic dignity of processional bas-relief. And in the case of all these creative critics of art it is evident that personality is an absolute essential for any real interpretation. When Rubinstein plays to us the SONATA APPASSIONATA of Beethoven, he gives us not merely Beethoven, but also himself, and so gives us Beethoven

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Names for the high and low, The names of the craig and the flat; But in all the land of Scotland, Never a name like that.

II. THE SEEKING OF THE NAME

AND now there was speech in the south, And a man of the south that was wise, A periwig'd lord of London, (2) Called on the clans to rise. And the riders rode, and the summons Came to the western shore,

Ballads

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske:

Athens, we shall now do well to study the opposite characteristics of modern society where they are most conspicuously exemplified, in our own country. The attributes of American life which it will be necessary to signalize will be seen to be only the attributes of modern life in their most exaggerated phase.

To begin with, in studying the United States, we are no longer dealing with a single city, or with small groups of cities. The city as a political unit, in the antique sense, has never existed among us, and indeed can hardly be said now to exist anywhere. The modern city is hardly more than a great emporium of trade, or

The Unseen World and Other Essays

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 Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

about."

"I'll keep the cook out of the way if you want me to."

"That would be a good idea. It isn't easy to talk, business before others," remarked the old man as they entered the room. It was a comfortably furnished and cozily warm apartment. Only two people were there, an old woman and a pretty young girl, who both looked up in astonishment as the men came in.

"Who's this you're bringing in, George?" asked Nanette.

"He's a peddler and he's got some trifles here you might like to look at."

"Why, yes, you wanted a thimble, didn't you, Lena?" asked Nanette,