Today's Stichomancy for Ringo Starr

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

some seventeen francs of taxes and spent a thousand crowns on his own whims. Well, dear boys, when Godefroid came of age, the Marquis d'Aiglemont submitted to him such an account of his trust as none of us would be likely to give a nephew; Godefroid's name was inscribed as the owner of eighteen thousand livres of rentes, a remnant of his father's wealth spared by the harrow of the great reduction under the Republic and the hailstorms of Imperial arrears. D'Aiglemont, that upright guardian, also put his ward in possession of some thirty thousand francs of savings invested with the firm of Nucingen; saying with all the charm of a grand seigneur and the indulgence of a soldier of the Empire, that he had contrived to put it aside for his ward's

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad:

A SMILE OF FORTUNE - HARBOUR STORY

Ever since the sun rose I had been looking ahead. The ship glided gently in smooth water. After a sixty days' passage I was anxious to make my landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics. The more enthusiastic of its inhabitants delight in describing it as the "Pearl of the Ocean." Well, let us call it the "Pearl." It's a good name. A pearl distilling much sweetness upon the world.

This is only a way of telling you that first-rate sugar-cane is grown there. All the population of the Pearl lives for it and by it. Sugar is their daily bread, as it were. And I was coming to

'Twixt Land & Sea

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll:

"Crocodiles do run, don't they?"

I suggested "crawling" as the proper word.

"He wasn't running," said Bruno, "and he wasn't crawling. He went struggling along like a portmanteau. And he held his chin ever so high in the air--"

"What did he do that for?" said Sylvie.

"'cause he hadn't got a toofache!" said Bruno. "Ca'n't oo make out nuffin wizout I 'splain it? Why, if he'd had a toofache, a course he'd have held his head down--like this--and he'd have put a lot of warm blankets round it!"

"If he'd had any blankets," Sylvie argued.

Sylvie and Bruno

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 Koran:

repentantly with thee; and transgress ye not:- verily, He on what ye do doth look.

Lean not unto those who do wrong, lest the Fire touch you, for ye have no patrons but God; and, moreover, ye shall not be helped!

And be thou steadfast in prayer at the two ends of the day, and the (former and latter) parts of the night. Verily, good works remove evil works;- that is a reminder to the mindful! And be thou patient, for God wastes not the hire of those who do good.

And were there among the generations before you any endowed with a remnant (of piety) forbidding evildoing in the earth, save a few of those whom we saved; but the evildoers followed what they enjoyed, and

The Koran