Today's Stichomancy for Julia Roberts

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

as far as Washington with her on the train. We gave her a dinner yesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell. She tried our new toboggan fire-escape on a bet. Clean from the attic, my boy. I imagine our native girls will rejoice at her departure. However, nobody's engaged to her, at least nobody here. How many may fancy themselves so elsewhere I can't say. Her name is Hortense Rieppe."

I suppose I must have been silent after finishing this letter.

"No bad news, I trust?" John Mayrant inquired.

I told him no; and presently we had resumed our seats in the quiet charm of the flowers.

I now spoke with an intention. "What a lot you seem to have seen and

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer:

At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles. Once I stumbled.

"My God!" came from Smith weakly.

But I recovered myself. Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to it by the killing pace we had made.

"Smith," I whispered, "look in front. Someone!"

As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again. It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand:

to be found in the food which we need and obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.

Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down, upturned, and the sky lay at the bottom. We knelt by the stream and we bent down to drink.

Anthem

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 The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Possessed already of the promised land, Far stretched and fair to see: A good sight, verily, And one to make the eyes of her who bore him Shine glad with hidden tears. Why question of his ease of who before him, In one place or another where they left Their names as far behind them as their bones, And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft, And shrewdly sharpened stones, Carved hard the way for his ascendency