Today's Stichomancy for Sammy Davis Jr.

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot:

to a respectful demeanour towards a "gentleman" would have been strong within him all the while. The word "gentleman" had a spell for Adam, and, as he often said, he "couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxy to's betters." I must remind you again that Adam had the blood of the peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime half a century ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be obsolete.

Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Adam's was assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that he thought far more of Arthur's good qualities, and attached far more value to very slight actions of his, than if they had

Adam Bede

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

Good Gertrude set some watch ouer your Sonne, This Graue shall haue a liuing Monument: An houre of quiet shortly shall we see; Till then, in patience our proceeding be.

Exeunt.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio

Ham. So much for this Sir; now let me see the other, You doe remember all the Circumstance

Hor. Remember it my Lord? Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kinde of fighting, That would not let me sleepe; me thought I lay

Hamlet

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw:

and money's money. [Vivie does not answer]. Nice day, isnt it?

VIVIE [with scarcely veiled contempt for this effort at conversation] Very.

CROFTS [with brutal good humor, as if he liked her pluck] Well thats not what I came to say. [Sitting down beside her] Now listen, Miss Vivie. I'm quite aware that I'm not a young lady's man.

VIVIE. Indeed, Sir George?

CROFTS. No; and to tell you the honest truth I dont want to be either. But when I say a thing I mean it; and when I feel a sentiment I feel it in earnest; and what I value I pay hard money

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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James:

you call that the worst?"

"You think nothing is better?" she asked.

She seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered, though still with the dawn of a prospect of relief. "Why not, if one doesn't KNOW?" After which, as their eyes, over his question, met in a silence, the dawn deepened, and something to his purpose came prodigiously out of her very face. His own, as he took it in, suddenly flushed to the forehead, and he gasped with the force of a perception to which, on the instant, everything fitted. The sound of his gasp filled the air; then he became articulate. "I see--if I don't suffer!"