Today's Stichomancy for Keith Richards

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

being put into improvements. The stock was selling at 30, and if a dividend was paid next year, it would go to par. But Mr. Beverly did not counsel buying the stock. 'I did not let mother have any,' he said, 'though I took some myself. But the bonds are different. You're getting the last that will be sold at par. In three days they will be placed before the public at 102 1/2 and interest.'"

"I was well pleased when I left Mr. Beverly's office. In a few days I was still more pleased to learn that I could sell my Petunia sixes for 104 if so wished. But I did not wish it; and Mr. Beverly told me that he should not sell his mother's unless they went to 110. 'In that case,' said he, 'it might be worth while to capitalise her premium.'"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Time came, and hardly one of us Had credence to restore, From what appeared one day, the man Whom we had known before.

The broken voice, the withered neck, The coat worn out with care, The cleanliness of indigence, The brilliance of despair, The fond imponderable dreams Of affluence, -- all were there.

Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes,

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

his master his own letter, unopened.

M. de Nueil went into a small room beyond the drawing-room, where he had left his rifle, and shot himself.

The swift and fatal ending of the drama, contrary as it is to all the habits of young France, is only what might have been expected. Those who have closely observed, or known for themselves by delicious experience, all that is meant by the perfect union of two beings, will understand Gaston de Nueil's suicide perfectly well. A woman does not bend and form herself in a day to the caprices of passion. The pleasure of loving, like some rare flower, needs the most careful ingenuity of culture. Time alone, and two souls attuned each to each,

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 Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles:

CREON Weep not, everything must have its day.

OEDIPUS Well I go, but on conditions.

CREON What thy terms for going, say.

OEDIPUS Send me from the land an exile.

CREON Ask this of the gods, not me.

OEDIPUS

Oedipus Trilogy