Today's Stichomancy for Tom Hanks
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: After those twenty years, standing in the close and stifling heat
of a Bornean evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the
image of Hudig's lofty and cool warehouses with their long and
straight avenues of gin cases and bales of Manchester goods; the
big door swinging noiselessly; the dim light of the place, so
delightful after the glare of the streets; the little railed-off
spaces amongst piles of merchandise where the Chinese clerks,
neat, cool, and sad-eyed, wrote rapidly and in silence amidst the
din of the working gangs rolling casks or shifting cases to a
muttered song, ending with a desperate yell. At the upper end,
facing the great door, there was a larger space railed off, well
 Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: little bottle-green coat with large white-metal buttons, and a black
stock that accentuated his cold stingy face, lighted up by gray-blue
eyes as keen and passionless as a cat's. Being very gentle, as men are
who act on a fixed plan of conduct, he seemed to make his wife happy
by never contradicting her; he allowed her to do the talking, and was
satisfied to move with the deliberate tenacity of an insect.
Dinah, adored for her beauty, in which she had no rival, and admired
for her cleverness by the most gentlemanly men of the place,
encouraged their admiration by conversations, for which it was
subsequently asserted, she prepared herself beforehand. Finding
herself listened to with rapture, she soon began to listen to herself,
 The Muse of the Department |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: Street all profess complete bafflement, and which the survivor
says he found in the cabin of the yacht, in a small carved shrine
of common pattern.
This man, after recovering his senses, told
an exceedingly strange story of piracy and slaughter. He is Gustaf
Johansen, a Norwegian of some intelligence, and had been second
mate of the two-masted schooner Emma of Auckland, which sailed
for Callao February 20th with a complement of eleven men. The
Emma, he says, was delayed and thrown widely south of her course
by the great storm of March 1st, and on March 22nd, in S. Latitude
49°51' W. Longitude 128°34', encountered the Alert, manned by
 Call of Cthulhu |
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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: Again she considered. "Well, miss--she's gone.
I won't tell tales."
"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I thought it,
after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue:
"Did she die here?"
"No--she went off."
I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that struck
me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked straight
out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right
to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do.
"She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?"
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