Today's Stichomancy for Billy Joel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton:

and strength. "I suppose you think it would be cheaper to marry me than to keep a hired girl. Everybody knows you're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess you're not going to get your mending done for you that way twice."

Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke. His face was ash-coloured and his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded him. When she ceased he held up his hand.

"That'll do--that'll about do," he said. He turned to the door and took his hat from the hat-peg. On the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard:

though I were her dear younger brother. Nobody, not even her father or mine, or Monsieur Leblanc, took the slightest notice of this queer relationship, or seemed to dream that it might lead to ultimate complications which, in fact, would have been very distasteful to them all for reasons that I will explain.

Needless to say, in due course, as they were bound to do, those complications arose, and under pressure of great physical and moral excitement the truth came out. It happened thus.

Every reader of the history of the Cape Colony has heard of the great Kaffir War of 1835. That war took place for the most part in the districts of Albany and Somerset, so that we inhabitants of Cradock, on

Marie

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

PARIS, May 6, 1835.

ADDENDUM

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

Aquilina The Magic Skin

Claparon, Charles A Bachelor's Establishment Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen A Man of Business The Middle Classes

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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac:

memories of his childhood come to him, with Alice, in the bright and graceful /allegro/ in A major.

"Can you not hear the cries of the innocent dragged into this infernal drama,--a persecuted creature? '/Non, non/,' " sang Gambara, who made the consumptive piano sing. "His native land and tender emotions have come back to him; his childhood and its memories have blossomed anew in Robert's heart. And now his mother's shade rises up, bringing with it soothing religious thoughts. It is religion that lives in that beautiful song in E major, with its wonderful harmonic and melodic progression in the words:

"Car dans les cieux, comme sur la terre,

Gambara