Today's Stichomancy for Oprah Winfrey

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke:

strong downward stream. Another likely place was a straight run of water, swift, but not too swift, with a sunken stone in the middle. The ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting water. An even current is far more comfortable, for then he discovers just how much effort is needed to balance against it, and keeps up the movement mechanically, as if he were half asleep. But his favourite place is under one of the floating islands of thick foam that gather in the corners below the falls. The matted flakes give a grateful shelter from the sun, I fancy, and almost all game-fish love to lie in the shade; but the chief reason why the onananiche haunt the drifting white mass is because it is full of flies and

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

the 460-meter fence, or military policemen who served as guides. Eleven of these men, probably members of the fence detail, spent several days at about 460 meters from ground zero. Working three to five hours per day between 9 August and 25 August, they would have been the only group to stay longer than one hour in the ground zero area. Of the remaining personnel who approached within 460 meters from ground zero, 25 spent 15 minutes and ten spent between 30 minutes and one hour in the ground zero area. Only 11 people received exposures of 3 to 5 roentgens between 20 July and 21 November. Most received less than 1 roentgen. After 21 November 1945, no one approached closer than the fence which was 460 meters from ground

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James:

used to say to Pemberton with the humour that made his queer delicacies manly - to carry themselves with an air. But their one idea was to get in with people who didn't want them and to take snubs as it they were honourable scars. Why people didn't want them more he didn't know - that was people's own affair; after all they weren't superficially repulsive, they were a hundred times cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the "poor swells" they rushed about Europe to catch up with. "After all they ARE amusing - they are!" he used to pronounce with the wisdom of the ages. To which Pemberton always replied: "Amusing - the great Moreen troupe? Why they're altogether delightful; and if it weren't for

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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson:

piper."

After that the voices fell again into the same muttering as before. Only now, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan, and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking orders. By this, I made sure they were coming on again, and told Alan.

"It's what we have to pray for," said he. "Unless we can give them a good distaste of us, and done with it, there'll be nae sleep for either you or me. But this time, mind, they'll be in earnest."

By this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but

Kidnapped