Today's Stichomancy for Liza Minnelli

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic:

many a weary hour, but to think of the future; not of its sorrows and treasured ills, but of the golden opportunities it would afford her to do something for her sick mother. At one o'clock the next day Dr. Flynch would come for the rent again and her mother could not pay him. She felt assured he was cold and cruel enough to execute his wicked threat to turn them out of the house, though her mother had not been off her bed for many weeks. What could be done? They could not pay the rent; that was impossible; and she regarded it as just as impossible to melt the heart of Dr. Flynch. But long before she went to sleep she had decided what to do.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Like a wisp of straw he broke them, Could not wring them without breaking, Such the strength was in his fingers. "Lazy Kwasind!" said his father, "In the hunt you never help me; Every bow you touch is broken, Snapped asunder every arrow; Yet come with me to the forest, You shall bring the hunting homeward." Down a narrow pass they wandered, Where a brooklet led them onward,

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

The notary looked at Fraisier, and, taking his cue from him, shrugged his shoulders.

"Never disturb us when we are signing documents. Just ask his name--is it a man or a gentleman? Is he a creditor?"

The clerk went and returned. "He insists that he must speak to M. Schmucke."

"His name?"

"His name is Topinard, he says."

"I will go out to him. Sign without disturbing yourself," said Gaudissart, addressing Schmucke. "Make an end of it; I will find out what he wants with us."

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 Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman:

left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to the Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle--nor would it matter to me whither they went.

So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes that saw yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and passed northwards after whispering with the landlord--all these I saw. But my mind was not with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for some way