Today's Stichomancy for Antonio Banderas

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov:

feeling.

There was much he did not understand in these houses, the souls of ruined women were a mystery to him as before; but it was clear to him that the thing was far worse than could have been believed. If that sinful woman who had poisoned herself was called fallen, it was difficult to find a fitting name for all these who were dancing now to this tangle of sound and uttering long, loathsome sentences. They were not on the road to ruin, but ruined.

"There is vice," he thought, "but neither consciousness of sin nor hope of salvation. They are sold and bought, steeped in wine

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

sniffed and looked around, but there was no pipe to be seen.

"Thomas," I said, "you have been smoking."

"No, ma'm." He was injured innocence itself. "It's on my coat, ma'm. Over at the club the gentlemen--"

But Thomas did not finish. The pantry was suddenly filled with the odor of singeing cloth. Thomas gave a clutch at his coat, whirled to the sink, filled a tumbler with water and poured it into his right pocket with the celerity of practice.

"Thomas," I said, when he was sheepishly mopping the floor, "smoking is a filthy and injurious habit. If you must smoke, you must; but don't stick a lighted pipe in your pocket again. Your

The Circular Staircase

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The White Man's Foot

In his lodge beside a river, Close beside a frozen river, Sat an old man, sad and lonely. White his hair was as a snow-drift; Dull and low his fire was burning, And the old man shook and trembled, Folded in his Waubewyon, In his tattered white-skin-wrapper, Hearing nothing but the tempest As it roared along the forest,

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:

definitely and admittedly bad?"

"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't."

"And you never told him?"

"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to HIM--"

"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept. All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_ would have told!"