Today's Stichomancy for Oprah Winfrey

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain:

but they have it to the ear. When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners-- put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound. For instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into decay in the North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.' Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh', 'No, Suh.'

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale:

So heavy that the blood can scarcely flow. Love comes to some unlooked-for, quietly, As when at twilight, with a soft surprise, We see the new-born crescent in the blue; And unto others love is planet-like, A cold and placid gleam that wavers not, And there are those who wait the call of love Expectant of his coming, as we watch To see the east grow pallid ere the moon Lifts up her flower-like head against the night. Love came to me as comes a cruel sun,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare:

To make Mars spurne his Drom. O, if thou couch But one night with her, every howre in't will Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and Thou shalt remember nothing more then what That Banket bids thee too.

HIPPOLITA.

Though much unlike [Kneeling.] You should be so transported, as much sorry I should be such a Suitour; yet I thinke, Did I not by th'abstayning of my joy, Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit

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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle:

and temple and cheek in a white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a livid blue, about the tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size of a man's hand, lying across the cheek and the side of the neck. Hiram could not keep his eyes from this mark and the white scar cutting across it.

There was an odd sort of incongruity in Levi's dress; a pair of heavy gold earrings and a dirty red handkerchief knotted loosely around his neck, beneath an open collar, displaying to its full length the lean, sinewy throat with its bony "Adam's apple," gave to his costume somewhat the smack of a sailor. He wore a coat that had once been of fine plum color--now stained and faded--too

Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates