Today's Stichomancy for Charisma Carpenter

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare:

With reason and reproof fond love a way.

[Enter Warwick.]

Here comes her father: I will work with him, To bear my colours in this field of love.

WARWICK. How is it that my sovereign is so sad? May I with pardon know your highness grief; And that my old endeavor will remove it, It shall not cumber long your majesty.

KING EDWARD. A kind and voluntary gift thou proferest,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo:

What matter? The few dollars earned in this way would mean a great deal to the mother, whom the girl's marriage had left desolate.

Polly had looked on hungrily the night that the mother had taken the daughter in her arms to say farewell in the little country town where the circus had played before her marriage. She could remember no woman's arms about HER, for it was fourteen years since tender hands had carried her mother from the performers' tent into the moonlit lot to die. The baby was so used to seeing "Mumsie" throw herself wearily on the ground after coming out of the "big top" exhausted, that she crept to the woman's side as

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas:

you are here, let us forget all. You are coming to take me away, are you not?"

"I am."

"I am quite healed; help me to get up, and you shall see how I can walk."

"You will not have to walk far, as I have my coach near the pond, behind Tilly's dragoons."

"Tilly's dragoons! What are they near the pond for?"

"Well," said the Grand Pensionary with a melancholy smile which was habitual to him, "the gentlemen at the Town-hall expect that the people at the Hague would like to see you

The Black Tulip

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 Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac:

living. If there was ever an astonished man it was the young professor when he beheld his uncle. The door was unlocked, his lamp still burning; he had been sitting up all night.

"You rascal!" said Monsieur de Bourbonne, sitting down in the nearest chair; "since when is it the fashion to laugh at uncles who have twenty-six thousand francs a year from solid acres to which we are the sole heir? Let me tell you that in the olden time we stood in awe of such uncles as that. Come, speak up, what fault have you to find with me? Haven't I played my part as uncle properly? Did I ever require you to respect me? Have I ever refused you money? When did I shut the door in your face on pretence that you had come to look after my health?