Today's Stichomancy for William Randolph Hearst

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas:

abandon me! Felton, let me die!"

"Well, then, we will live and die together!" cried he, pressing his lips to those of the prisoner.

Several strokes resounded on the door; this time Milady really pushed him away from her.

"Hark," said she, "we have been overheard! Someone is coming! All is over! We are lost!"

"No," said Felton; it is only the sentinel warning me that they are about to change the guard."

"Then run to the door, and open it yourself."

Felton obeyed; this woman was now his whole thought, his whole

The Three Musketeers

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare:

My better angel is a man right fair, My worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her fair pride. And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell: For being both to me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's hell: The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,

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

And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill? It is enough you know; and it is fit, What being more known grows worse, to smother it. All love the womb that their first bred, Then give my tongue like leave to love my head.

ANTIOCHUS.[Aside] Heaven, that I had thy head! he has found the meaning: But I will gloze with him. -- Young prince of Tyre. Though by the tenour of our strict edict, Your exposition misinterpreting, We might proceed to cancel of your days;

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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

he gives me when awake it seems as though he were annoyed at being interrupted in some arduous mental operation; and as I emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, un- clouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed. Even as I have been decoyed into this awful, this death-haunted command. . . ."

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The Shadow Line