Today's Stichomancy for Edgar Allan Poe

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran:

half of what he leaves; and he shall be her heir, if she have no son. But if there be two sisters, let them both have two thirds of what he leaves; and if there be brethren, both men and women, let the male have like the portion of two females. God makes this manifest to you lest ye err; for God all things doth know.

THE CHAPTER OF THE TABLE

(V. Medinah.)

IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God.

O ye who believe! fulfil your compacts.- Lawful for you are brute beasts, save what is here recited to you, not allowing you the chase while ye are on pilgrimage; verily, God ordaineth what He will.

The Koran

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence:

me such a fool. I want you to come and fetch me back from here. I came with Jack Bredon yesterday, instead of going to work, and enlisted. He said he was sick of wearing the seat of a stool out, and, like the idiot you know I am, I came away with him.

"'I have taken the King's shilling, but perhaps if you came for me they would let me go back with you. I was a fool when I did it. I don't want to be in the army. My dear mother, I am nothing but a trouble to you. But if you get me out of this, I promise I will have more sense and consideration. . . .'"

Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair.

"Well, NOW," she cried, "let him stop!"

Sons and Lovers

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton:

while, she would suffer, no one but he could dream how completely, but her strong soul would conquer, and she would live the life she had visioned in mo- ments of despair; not of cloistered selfishness, but of incomparable usefulness to her little world; and far happier, in her eternal youthfulness of heart, in that divine life of the imagination where he must always be with her as she had known him briefly at his best, than in the blunt commonplaceness of daily existence, the routine and disillusionment of the world. Perhaps--who knew?--he had, after all,

Rezanov

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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac:

so long as the bachelor lived, it passed into his hands. This happened in 1806. And in this year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has retired from business, he is seventy years old; the /ci-devant/ young man is in his dotage; and as he has married his Mme. Evrard, he may last for a long while yet. As the hairdresser gave the woman thirty thousand francs, his bit of real estate has cost him, first and last, more than a million, and the house at this day is worth eight or nine hundred thousand francs.

Like the hairdresser, Remonencq the Auvergnat had overheard Brunner's parting remark in the gateway on the day of Cecile's first interview with that phoenix of eligible men. Remonencq at once longed to gain a