Today's Stichomancy for Dr. Phil

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

gate. There was a babel of welcoming voices, of which Annie could not distinguish one articulate word. She sat leaning forward, her eyes intent upon the road. Then she heard the click of her father's gate and the dark, shadowy figure reappeared in the road. Annie knew who it was; she knew that Tom Reed was coming to see her. For a second, rapture seized her, then dismay. How well she knew her sisters -- how very well! Not one of them would have given him the slightest inkling of the true situation. They would have told him, by the sweetest of insinuations,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad:

a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, and not very many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression, or of an anecdote in my life. The conception of a planned book was entirely outside my mental range when I sat down to write; the ambition of being an author had never turned up among those gracious imaginary existences one creates fondly for oneself at

A Personal Record

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

"Ah! Madame de Mortsauf is dead; your poor brother has, no doubt, gone to Clochegourde."

"Are you aware, monsieur," resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene, "that what you have just said is a great impertinence?"

"If I did not know the strictness of your principles," he answered, naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are only amusing yourself with me."

The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.

"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover

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 Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale:

VIII

Florence

The bells ring over the Anno, Midnight, the long, long chime; Here in the quivering darkness I am afraid of time.

Oh, gray bells cease your tolling, Time takes too much from me, And yet to rock and river He gives eternity.