Today's Stichomancy for Julia Roberts

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

not be really so -- so nice-looking as I seem to you. Please, do take it; O, do! I cannot and will not have it. Believe me, your generosity is too great. I have never done you a single kindness, and why should you be so kind to me?" A factitious reply had been again upon his lips, but it was again suspended, and he looked at her with an arrested eye. The truth was, that as she now stood -- excited, wild, and honest as the day -- her alluring beauty bore out so fully the epithets he had bestowed upon it that he was quite startled at his temerity in

Far From the Madding Crowd

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe:

gardens, not a hogstye, not a necessary house, but what was built of old planks, beams, wales, and timbers, etc., the wrecks of ships, and ruins of mariners' and merchants' fortunes; and in some places were whole yards filled and piled up very high with the same stuff laid up, as I supposed to sell for the like building purposes, as there should he occasion.

About the year 1692 (I think it was that year) there was a melancholy example of what I have said of this place: a fleet of 200 sail of light colliers (so they call the ships bound northward empty to fetch coals from Newcastle to London) went out of Yarmouth Roads with a fair wind, to pursue their voyage, and were taken

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

One fairer then my loue: the all-seeing Sun Nere saw her match, since first the world begun

Ben. Tut, you saw her faire, none else being by, Herselfe poys'd with herselfe in either eye: But in that Christall scales, let there be waid, Your Ladies loue against some other Maid That I will show you, shining at this Feast, And she shew scant shell, well, that now shewes best

Rom. Ile goe along, no such sight to be showne, But to reioyce in splendor of mine owne. Enter Capulets Wife and Nurse.

Romeo and Juliet

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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson:

of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did.

I think I see you - for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these sentences - I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical expression at the best. "He had no hand in the reforms," he was "a coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words; and you may think it possible that I am come to support you with fresh evidence. In a sense, it is even so. Damien has been too much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to remark or the pen to