Today's Stichomancy for Jim Henson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare:

Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

'So then he hath it when he cannot use it, And leaves it to be master'd by his young; Who in their pride do presently abuse it: Their father was too weak, and they too strong, To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long. The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours, Even in the moment that we call them ours.

'Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius:

Can still beget not anything of new. But if by chance they lose, inside a body, Their own sense and another sense take on, What, then, avails it to assign them that Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides, To touch on proof that we pronounced before, Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls To change to living chicks, and swarming worms To bubble forth when from the soaking rains The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all Can out of non-sensations be begot.

Of The Nature of Things

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson:

as from something elfin.

'I am cold,' she said, 'and weary. Let me rest beside your fire.'

The woodman was visibly commoved, but answered nothing.

'I will pay,' she said, and then repented of the words, catching perhaps a spark of terror from his frightened eyes. But, as usual, her courage rekindled brighter for the check. She put him from the door and entered; and he followed her in superstitious wonder.

Within, the hut was rough and dark; but on the stone that served as hearth, twigs and a few dry branches burned with the brisk sounds and all the variable beauty of fire. The very sight of it composed her; she crouched hard by on the earth floor and shivered in the

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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac:

life. Ginevra was born unyielding of will, vindictive, and passionate, like her father in his youth.

The Corsican had taken pleasure in developing these savage sentiments in the heart of his daughter, precisely as a lion teaches the lion- cubs to spring upon their prey. But this apprenticeship to vengeance having no means of action in their family life, it came to pass that Ginevra turned the principle against her father; as a child she forgave him nothing, and he was forced to yield to her. Piombo saw nothing more than childish nonsense in these fictitious quarrels, but the child was all the while acquiring a habit of ruling her parents. In the midst, however, of the tempests which the father was fond of