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 An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac:

to Prebaudet. Now the provinces, which look solely to results, care little about the beauty or elegance of the means, provided they are efficient.

CHAPTER V

AN OLD MAID'S HOUSEHOLD

To complete the picture of the internal habits and ways of this house, it is necessary to group around Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe de Sponde Jacquelin, Josette, and Mariette, the cook, who employed themselves in providing for the comfort of uncle and niece.

Jacquelin, a man of forty, short, fat, ruddy, and brown, with a face like a Breton sailor, had been in the service of the house for twenty-

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White:

got to rustle some more supplies. That shipwreck of ours to-day mighty near cleaned us out of some things. Lucky Charlie held his head and locked in the bedding with those sweeps, or we'd have been strapped."

"I didn't do it," grumbled Charlie. " It was him."

"Oh!" Orde congratulated Newmark. "Good work! I'm tickled to death you belonged to that crew."

"That old mossback Reed was right on deck with his rope," remarked Johnny Simms. "That was pretty decent of him."

"Old skunk!" growled North. "He lost us two days with his damn nonsense. You let him off too easy, Jack."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville:

the Psalter. And therefore allege they so the letter. But they allege not the authorities thus in Latin, but in their language full apertly, and say well, that David and other prophets say it.

Natheles, Saint Augustine and Saint Gregory say thus:- Augustinus: QUI SCELERA SUA COGITAT, & CONVERSUS FUERIT, VENIAM SIBI CREDAT. Gregorius: DOMINUS POTIUS MENTEM QUAM VERBA RESPICIT. And Saint Hilary saith: LONGORUM TEMPORUM CRIMINA, IN ICTU OCULI PEREUNT, SI CORDIS NATA FUERIT COMPUNCTIO. And for such authorities they say, that only to God shall a man knowledge his defaults, yielding himself guilty and crying him mercy, and behoting to him to amend himself. And therefore, when they will shrive them, they take fire

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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare:

Let me be flung into the Ocean, And swallowed in the bowels of the earth, Or let the ruddy lightning of great Jove Descend upon this my devoted head.

BRUTUS.

[Taking Gwendoline by the hand.]

But for I see you all to be in doubt, Who shall be matched with our royal son, Locrine, receive this present at my hand, A gift more rich than are the wealthy mines Found in the bowels of America.