Today's Stichomancy for Will Smith

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville:

and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground--so the last long dying spout of the whale.

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body

Moby Dick

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells:

I'm concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists."

"I don't believe that," said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton's shoulder. "You've made me half believe in that story somehow, and I don't want to see the thing done!"

"Goodness!" said I, "here's Wish frightened!"

"I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. "I believe that if he goes through these motions right he'll GO."

"He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There's only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides . . . And such a ghost! Do you think--?"

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

Muller threw on his coat hastily. "You didn't pay him, did you? On a cold day like this the drivers don't like to wait long in any one place."

"No danger. I haven't money enough for that," replied Amster with a sad smile. Muller did not hear him as he was already outside. But the commissioner with whom he had been talking and to whom Muller had already spoken of his voluntary assistant, entered into a conversation with Amster, and said to him finally: "I will take it upon myself to guarantee your future, if you are ready to enter the secret service under Muller's orders. If you wish to do this you can stay right on now, for I think we will need you in this case."

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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley:

or on many days, when a quiet sea and offshore breezes have prevented any new objects from coming to land with the rising tide, you would investigate the flowers peculiar to our sea-rocks and sandhills. Even if you do not find the delicate lily-like Trichonema of the Channel Islands and Dawlish, or the almost as beautiful Squill of the Cornish cliffs, or the sea-lavender of North Devon, or any of those rare Mediterranean species which Mr. Johns has so charmingly described in his "Week at the Lizard Point," yet an average cliff, with its carpeting of pink thrift and of bladder catchfly, and Lady's finger, and elegant grasses, most of them peculiar to the sea marge, is often a very lovely flower-