Today's Stichomancy for Bill O'Reilly

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

charming things in which so many Parisian women spend their lives, and which give such significance to all that we see about them, and in them, and on them. Few women go to milliners and dressmakers for their own pleasure and interest. When old they never think of adornment. The next time you meet in the street a young woman stopping for a moment to look into a shop-window, examine her face carefully. "Will he think I look better in that?" are the words written on that fair brow, in the eyes sparkling with hope, in the smile that flickers on the lips.

Lady Dudley's ball took place on a Saturday night. On the following Monday the countess went to the Opera, feeling certain of seeing Raoul, who was, in fact, watching for her on one of the stairways

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton:

is addressing. The set of people that the Van Siderens get about them don't care for the truth or falseness of a doctrine. They are attracted simply by its novelty."

"And yet it was in just such a set of people that you and I met, and learned the truth from each other."

"That was different."

"In what way?"

"I was not a young girl, to begin with. It is perfectly unfitting that young girls should be present at--at such times-- should hear such things discussed--"

"I thought you considered it one of the deepest social wrongs

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac:

husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!"

"Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the desire to enjoy a true love in peace?" asked the princess.

"No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beausant and Madame de Langeais, who, be it said, between you and me, would have been, in a less vulgar period than ours, the La Villiere, the Diane de Poitiers, the Gabrielle d'Estrees of history."

"Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could evoke the shades of those women, and ask them--"

"But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, "why ask the dead? We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this

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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde:

Which scarce had caught again its imagery Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly.

But little care had he for any thing Though up and down the beech the squirrel played, And from the copse the linnet 'gan to sing To its brown mate its sweetest serenade; Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen.

But when the herdsman called his straggling goats With whistling pipe across the rocky road, And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes