Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Gayheart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter:

of all the old houses in Gloucester, there are little mouse staircases and secret trap-doors; and the mice run from house to house through those long, narrow passages.

But the tailor came out of his shop and shuffled home through the snow. And although it was not a big house, the tailor was so poor he only rented the kitchen.

He lived alone with his cat; it was

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy:

to get dark, a woodcock flew over Turgénieff, and he shot it. "Killed it?" called out my father. "Fell like a stone; send your dog to pick him up," answered Iván Sergéyevitch. My father sent us with the dog, Turgénieff showed us where to look for the bird; but search as we might, and the dog, too, there was no woodcock to be found. At last Turgénieff came to help, and my father came; there was no woodcock there. "Perhaps you only winged it; it may have got away along the ground," said my father, puzzled. "It is impossible that the dog

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot:

less wanting so far as their aerial fleets were concerned. If Germany's huge aerial navy had been in readiness for instant service when she invaded Belgium, she would have overcome that little country's resistance in a far shorter time and with much less waste of life. It was the Belgians who first brought home to the belligerents the prominent part that aircraft were destined to play in war, and the military possibilities of the aeroplane. True, the Belgians had a very small aerial navy, but it was put to work without delay and accomplished magnificent results, ascertaining the German positions and dispositions with unerring accuracy and incredible ease, and thus enabling the commander of

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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James:

been on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no circling cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good in themselves. It wasn't that they could show him anything, it was only that they could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a while, they did show him something: the arch of a high doorway