Today's Stichomancy for Mariah Carey

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac:

roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.

Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James:

lightly wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any one but you."

"That shows"--he was magnanimous--"that it's something not in you, but in one's self. It's MY fault."

She was silent a little. "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's. It's the fault of his having brought her."

"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring her?"

"He couldn't afford not to."

"Oh you were a trophy--one of the spoils of conquest? But why in that case, since you do 'compromise'--"

"Don't I compromise HIM as well? I do compromise him as well,"

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale:

When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now.

After Parting

Oh, I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air.

I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day,

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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James:

means. I knew what his means had been - his article on "The Right of Way" had distinctly given one the figure. As he was now exactly in the position in which still more exactly I was not I watched from month to month, in the likely periodicals, for the heavy message poor Corvick had been unable to deliver and the responsibility of which would have fallen on his successor. The widow and wife would have broken by the rekindled hearth the silence that only a widow and wife might break, and Deane would be as aflame with the knowledge as Corvick in his own hour, as Gwendolen in hers, had been. Well, he was aflame doubtless, but the fire was apparently not to become a public blaze. I scanned