Today's Stichomancy for Edward Norton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac:

fresh troops is attacking on our right flank."

A very few words will serve to explain this sudden arrival of Gigonnet and Gobseck on the field of battle,--for des Lupeaulx found them both waiting. At eight o'clock that evening, Martin Falleix, returning on the wings of the wind,--thanks to three francs to the postboys and a courier in advance,--had brought back with him the deeds of the property signed the night before. Taken at once to the Cafe Themis by Mitral, these securities passed into the hands of the two usurers, who hastened (though on foot) to the ministry. It was past eleven o'clock. Des Lupeaulx trembled when he saw those sinister faces, emitting a simultaneous look as direct as a pistol shot and as brilliant as the

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

magazine, on some article to which my signature was attached. "I read it with great pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its influence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The consequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity of my having saddled you with a knowledge that you may find something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't imagine how I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never before mentioned, no matter in what state of expansion, the fact of my little secret, and I shall never speak of that mystery again. I was accidentally so much more explicit with you than it had ever entered into my game to be, that I find this game - I mean the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott:

have been worked into the Chronicles of the Canongate, besides a manuscript drama, the long-neglected performance of my youthful days--"The House of Aspen."

The Keepsake for 1828 included, however, only three of these little prose tales, of which the first in order was that entitled "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror." By way of INTRODUCTION to this, when now included in a general collection of my lucubrations, I have only to say that it is a mere transcript, or at least with very little embellishment, of a story that I remembered being struck with in my childhood, when told at the fireside by a lady of eminent virtues and no inconsiderable share of talent, one of

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 School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan:

Sdeath, you Blockhead--what do you want?

SERVANT. I beg your Pardon Sir, but I thought you wouldn't chuse Sir Peter to come up without announcing him?

SURFACE. Sir Peter--Oons--the Devil!

LADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter! O Lud! I'm ruined! I'm ruin'd!

SERVANT. Sir, 'twasn't I let him in.

LADY TEAZLE. O I'm undone--what will become of me now Mr. Logick.-- Oh! mercy, He's on the Stairs--I'll get behind here--and if ever I'm so imprudent again---- [Goes behind the screen--]

SURFACE. Give me that--Book!----