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 Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce:

The Reform School Board

THE members of the School Board in Doosnoswair being suspected of appointing female teachers for an improper consideration, the people elected a Board composed wholly of women. In a few years the scandal was at an end; there were no female teachers in the Department.

The Poet's Doom

AN Object was walking along the King's highway wrapped in meditation and with little else on, when he suddenly found himself at the gates of a strange city. On applying for admittance, he was arrested as a necessitator of ordinances, and taken before the

Fantastic Fables

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

philosophes romains qui se tuaient. N'est-ce pas, Tigellin, que les philosophes e Rome se tuent?

TIGELLIN. Il y en a qui se tuent, Seigneur. Ce sont les Stoiciens. Ce sont de gens tres grossiers. Enfin, ce sont des gens tres ridicules. Moi, je les trouve tres ridicules.

HERODE. Moi aussi. C'est ridicule de se tuer.

TIGELLIN. On rit beaucoup d'eux e Rome. L'empereur a fait un poeme satirique contre eux. On le recite partout.

HERODE. Ah! il a fait un poeme satirique contre eux? Cesar est merveilleux. Il peut tout faire . . . C'est etrange qu'il se soit tue, le jeune Syrien. Je le regrette. Oui, je le regrette

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

him, while I figured out what I had best do with him.

He struggled a little at first, but finally lay still, and so I released the pressure of my fingers at his windpipe, for which I imagine he was quite thankful--I know that I should have been.

I hated to kill him in cold blood; but what else I was to do with him I could not see, for to turn him loose would have been merely to have the entire village aroused and down upon me in a moment. The fellow lay looking up at me with the surprise still deeply writ- ten on his countenance. At last, all of a sudden, a look

Pellucidar

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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane:

woman lurched heavily out on the sidewalk.

The gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated. They began to dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. Wide dirty grins spread over each face.

The woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageous cluster of little boys. They laughed delightedly and scampered off a short distance, calling out over their shoulders to her. She stood tottering on the curb-stone and thundered at them.

"Yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists. The little boys whooped in glee. As she started up the street they fell in behind and marched uproariously. Occasionally she wheeled about and made

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets