Today's Stichomancy for Cameron Diaz

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells:

the same sense that men are--fighting individuals in a scramble. I don't see how they can be. Every home is a little recess, a niche, out of the world of business and competition, in which women and the future shelter."

"A little pit!" said Ann Veronica; "a little prison!"

"It's just as often a little refuge. Anyhow, that is how things are."

"And the man stands as the master at the mouth of the den."

"As sentinel. You forget all the mass of training and tradition and instinct that go to make him a tolerable master. Nature is a mother; her sympathies have always been feminist, and she has

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

that!"

"That's easily remedied."

Again a little silence, broken by Anna throwing up the slide.

Sabina ran into the kitchen.

"Here, take this milk and egg up to the Frau," said Anna. "Who've you got in there?"

"Got such a funny man! I think he's a little gone here," tapping her forehead.

Upstairs in the ugly room the Frau sat sewing, a black shawl round her shoulders, her feet encased in red woollen slippers. The girl put the milk on a table by her, then stood, polishing a spoon on her apron.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley:

if you deny, you are met with one universal frown and snarl--that man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of the religious world, by processes varying with each denomination, he may--strange paradox--create a Father for himself?

But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a "Zeus, Father of gods and men." Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple human needs of man, no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is Nature to them no longer "the will of God exprest in facts," and to break a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who "looked on all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." And yet

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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect," I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman."

My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?"

"You know him then?"

She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?"

I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!"

"And dressed--?"

"In somebody's clothes. "They're smart, but they're not his own."

She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!"