Today's Stichomancy for Clyde Barrow

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

home to the reader through the intellect rather than through the feelings; so that, without being very deeply moved or interested by the characters of the piece, we should recognise vividly the hinges on which the little plot revolves. But the fabulist now seeks analogies where before he merely sought humorous situations. There will be now a logical nexus between the moral expressed and the machinery employed to express it. The machinery, in fact, as this change is developed, becomes less and less fabulous. We find ourselves in presence of quite a serious, if quite a miniature division of creative literature; and sometimes we

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon:

continuing the "Hellenica," at this point to insert the "Anabasis." My next volume will contain the remaining books of the "Hellenica" and the rest of Xenophon's "historical" writings.

BOOK III

B.C. 403-402. Thus the civil strife at Athens had an end. At a subsequent date Cyrus sent messengers to Lacedaemon, claiming requital in kind for the service which he had lately rendered in the war with Athens.[1] The demand seemed to the ephorate just and reasonable. Accordingly they ordered Samius,[2] who was admiral at the time, to put himself at the disposition of Cyrus for any service which he might

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf:

replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back of his house. And he thought of Mrs Ramsay as he looked at that stir among the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a deer-stalker's hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in galoshes to snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing (they were carrying bricks up a little plank as he watched them), and work it into the picture; or if one thought of her simply as a woman, one must endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy--she did not like admiration--or

To the Lighthouse

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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

dead serfs whose names have not yet been removed from the revision list?"

"I have. But why do you ask?"

"Because I want you to make them over to me."

"Of what use would they be to you?"

"Never mind. I have a purpose in wanting them."

"What purpose?"

"A purpose which is strictly my own affair. In short, I need them."

"You seem to have hatched a very fine scheme. Out with it, now! What is in the wind?"

"How could I have hatched such a scheme as you say? One could not very

Dead Souls