Today's Stichomancy for Jennifer Connelly

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest:

The castle of my rest; The path where all is fine and fair, And little children run, For love and joy are waiting there As soon as day is done.

There is no rich reward of fame That can compare with this: At home I wear an honest name, My lips are fit to kiss. At home I'm always brave and strong, And with the setting sun

Just Folks

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley:

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially among children.

Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of messes, and the territory of tuck, where the ground was very sticky, for it was all made of bad toffee (not Everton toffee, of course), and full of deep cracks and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green goose-berries, and sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu:

triumphant expeditions, such as that of Pan Ch`ao who penetrated to the Caspian, and in more recent years, those of Fu-k`ang-an and Tso Tsung-t`ang.]

21. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.

[Chang Yu quotes Wei Liao Tzu as saying that we must not break camp until we have gained the resisting power of the enemy and the cleverness of the opposing general. Cf. the "seven comparisons" in I. ss. 13.]

22. He will conquer who has learnt the artifice of deviation.

[See supra, SS. 3, 4.]

The Art of War

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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

"You are quite dispassionate!" Her eyes were always toward the window.

"That's my 'sacred trust.'"

It made her look at me. "Yours?"

"Not yours--yet! It would be yours if you had won." I thought a slight change came in her steady scrutiny. "And, Miss La Heu, it was awful about the negro. It is awful. The young North thinks so just as much as you do. Oh, we shock our old people! We don't expect them to change, but they mustn't expect us not to. And even some of them have begun to whisper a little doubtfully. But never mind them--here's the negro. We can't kick him out. That plan is childish. So, it's like two men having to live in one house. The white man would keep the house in repair, the black would