Today's Stichomancy for Neal Stephenson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard:

benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone--whom, by the way, I knew very well--and gave myself up for dead. But suddenly, at that moment, the lion's grip on my thigh loosened, and he stood over me, swaying to and fro, his huge mouth, from which the blood was gushing, wide opened. Then he roared, and the sound shook the rocks.

"To and fro he swung, and then the great head dropped on me, knocking all the breath from my body, and he was dead. My bullet had entered in the centre of his chest and passed out on the right side of the spine about half way down the back.

"The pain of my wound kept me from fainting, and as soon as I got my breath I managed to drag myself from under him. Thank heavens, his

Long Odds

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James:

through the cage at the eyes and lips that must so often have been so near as own--looked at them with a strange passion that for an instant had the result of filling out some of the gaps, supplying the missing answers, in his correspondence. Then as she made out that the features she thus scanned and associated were totally unaware of it, that they glowed only with the colour of quite other and not at all guessable thoughts, this directly added to their splendour, gave the girl the sharpest impression she had yet received of the uplifted, the unattainable plains of heaven, and yet at the same time caused her to thrill with a sense of the high company she did somehow keep. She was with the absent through her

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

my Dear----

SIR PETER. There now you want to quarrel again.

LADY TEAZLE. No--I am sure I don't--but if you will be so peevish----

SIR PETER. There--now who begins first?

LADY TEAZLE. Why you to be sure--I said nothing[--]but there's no bearing your Temper.

SIR PETER. No--no--my dear--the fault's in your own temper.

LADY TEAZLE. Aye you are just what my Cousin Sophy said you would be--

SIR PETER. Your Cousin Sophy--is a forward impertinent Gipsey--

LADY TEAZLE. Go you great Bear--how dare you abuse my Relations--

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 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair:

over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out to the "killing bed." Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of