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 Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum:

"Because I shall suffer more, and that will be delightful."

"I am not anxious to kill you, nor to make you suffer," said Marvel, "all that I ask is that you acknowledge me your master."

"I won't!" answered the boy. "I acknowledge no master in all the world!"

"Then you must fight," declared the prince, gravely. "If you win, I will promise to serve you faithfully; and if I conquer you, then you must acknowledge me your master, and obey my commands."

"Agreed!" cried the boy, with sudden energy, and he rushed into the cave and soon returned clad in armor and bearing a sword and shield. On the shield was pictured a bolt of lightning.

"Lightning will soon strike those three girls whose champion you seem

The Enchanted Island of Yew

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

Coach-Horse?

LADY TEAZLE. Horrid!--I swear I never did.

SIR PETER. This, madam, was your situation--and what have I not done for you? I have made you woman of Fashion of Fortune of Rank-- in short I have made you my wife.

LADY TEAZLE. Well then and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation.

SIR PETER. What's that pray?

LADY TEAZLE. Your widow.--

SIR PETER. Thank you Madam--but don't flatter yourself for though your ill-conduct may disturb my Peace it shall never break my Heart

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac:

more violent is the expression of her wrath. The Tonsard girl took no notice of Rigou or of Socquard; she flung herself on a bench, in gloomy and sullen silence, which the ex-monk carefully watched.

"Get a fresh lemon, Aglae," said Pere Socquard, "and go and rinse that glass yourself."

"You did right to send her away," whispered Rigou, "or she might have been hurt"; and he glanced significantly at the hand with which Marie grasped a stool she had caught up to throw at Aglae's head.

"Now, Marie," said Socquard, standing before her, "people don't come here to fling stools; if you were to break one of my mirrors, the milk of your cows wouldn't pay for the damage."

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 Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson:

in vain expectation of that seed that was to be laid upon his tongue, and give him renewed and clearer utterance.

These men may have something to say, if they could only say it - indeed they generally have; but the next class are people who, having nothing to say, are cursed with a facility and an unhappy command of words, that makes them the prime nuisances of the society they affect. They try to cover their absence of matter by an unwholesome vitality of delivery. They look triumphantly round the room, as if courting applause, after a torrent of diluted truism. They talk in a circle, harping on the same dull round of argument,