Today's Stichomancy for T. E. Lawrence

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer:

"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.

She looked at me oddly.

"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child." She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more soft. "My sister died in the desert. My brother lived. Better, far better, that he had died, too."

Her words impressed me intensely.

"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of slave-raids, of the desert. Where did these things take place? Of what country are you?"

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

held firmly between her feet, made a moving point of light along the highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country. II On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which John Bergson

O Pioneers!

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske:

That soul and body share one common doom";

and is still better rendered by Dr. Parsons,--

"Here in their cemetery on this side, With his whole sect, is Epicurus pent, Who thought the spirit with its body died."[39]

[39] "Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno Con Epieuro tutti i suoi seguaci, Che l'anima col corpo morta fanno." Inferno, X. 13-15.

And here my eyes, reverting to the end of Canto IX.,

fall upon a similar contrast between Mr. Longfellow's lines,--

The Unseen World and Other Essays

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 Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde:

Take off your damned hands. Loose me, I say!

SIMONE. Nay, you are caught in such a cunning vice That nothing will avail you, and your life Narrowed into a single point of shame Ends with that shame and ends most shamefully.

GUIDO. Oh! let me have a priest before I die!

SIMONE. What wouldst thou have a priest for? Tell thy sins To God, whom thou shalt see this very night And then no more for ever. Tell thy sins To Him who is most just, being pitiless, Most pitiful being just. As for myself. . .