Today's Stichomancy for Peter Jackson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis:

Hearts and Old Maid. He had a tenor voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel's-hair brush. Babbitt considered it excusable in a family-man to growl, "Seen this new picture of the kid--husky little devil, eh?" but Laylock's domestic confidences were as bubbling as a girl's.

"Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen, Mr. Babbitt. Why don't we try something in poetry? Honest, it'd have wonderful pulling-power. Listen:

'Mid pleasures and palaces, Wherever you may roam, You just provide the little bride And we'll provide the home.

Do you get it? See--like 'Home Sweet Home.' Don't you--"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

presumed from seeing me there, he said, that I had come ashore for a couple of days' leave.

He was a low-voiced man. I spoke a little louder, saying that: No--I had left the ship for good.

"A free man for a bit," was his comment.

"I suppose I may call myself that--since eleven o'clock," I said.

Hamilton had stopped eating at the sound of our voices. He laid down his knife and fork gently, got up, and muttering something about "this

The Shadow Line

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad:

irresistible might a long series of military successes brings to a nation the less obvious aspect of such a fortune may perchance be lost to view. The old navy in its last days earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare cavil at. And this supreme favour they owe to their adversaries alone.

Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793. Later still, the resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than all, that could be demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or

The Mirror of the Sea

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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner:

And I said, "I had not thought in heaven to see men labour so!" And I thought of the garden where men sang and loved, and I wondered that any should choose to labour on that bare mountain-side. And I saw upon the foreheads of the men as they worked a light, and the drops which fell from them as they worked had light.

And I asked God what they were seeking for.

And God touched my eyes, and I saw that what they found were small stones, which had been too bright for me to see before; and I saw that the light of the stones and the light on the men's foreheads was the same. And I saw that when one found a stone he passed it on to his fellow, and he to another, and he to another. No man kept the stone he found. And at times