Today's Stichomancy for Niccolo Machiavelli

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft:

is near like them at May Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear off some. I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured there being much of outside to work on. Morning found Dr Armitage in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of wakeful concentration. He had not left the manuscript all night, but sat at his table under the electric light turning page after page with shaking hands as fast as he could decipher the cryptic text. He had nervously telephoned his wife he would not be home, and when she brought him a breakfast from the house

The Dunwich Horror

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Dashing in twain the gold toy, brandishing wildly his sword. Hermes, malicious one, laughed beyond measure; yet deep-seated sorrow

Seized upon Phoebus's heart, seized on the heart of each Muse.

1799.* ----- THE NEW AMOR.

AMOR, not the child, the youthful lover of Psyche, Look'd round Olympus one day, boldly, to triumph inured; There he espied a goddess, the fairest amongst the immortals,-- Venus Urania she,--straight was his passion inflamed. Even the holy one powerless proved, alas! 'gainst his wooing,--

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf:

to abstract some very obscure piece of china.

"We have our work," she said, withdrawing her head, displaying cheeks more than usually crimson, and placing a jam-pot emphatically upon the table. But, for the moment, she was unable to launch herself upon one of those enthusiastic, but inconsequent, tirades upon liberty, democracy, the rights of the people, and the iniquities of the Government, in which she delighted. Some memory from her own past or from the past of her sex rose to her mind and kept her abashed. She glanced furtively at Mary, who still sat by the window with her arm upon the sill. She noticed how young she was and full of the promise of womanhood. The sight made her so uneasy that she fidgeted the cups

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 Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo:

wasn't lonesome." And she stole away to her room.

The next morning when Aggie did not appear at the breakfast table, Jimmy rushed to her room in genuine alarm. It was now Aggie's turn to sleep peacefully; and he stole dejectedly back to the dining-room and for the first time since their marriage, he munched his cold toast and sipped his coffee alone.

So thoroughly was his life now disorganised, and so low were his spirits that he determined to walk to his office, relying upon the crisp morning air to brace him for the day's encounters. By degrees, he regained his good cheer and as usual when in rising spirits, his mind turned toward Aggie. The second anniversary of