Today's Stichomancy for Jack Nicholson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde:

Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.

ALGERNON. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

JACK. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.

ALGERNON. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.

JACK. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor:

family had lived; for each member of it was too proud to allow the community to suspect the change in their circumstances. De Courcy, retained more than ever at home, and bound to steady labor, was man enough to subdue his impatient spirit for the time; but he secretly determined that with the first change for the better he would follow the fate he had chosen for himself.

Late in the fall came the opportunity for which he had longed. One evening he brought home a letter, in the well-known handwriting. His father opened and read it in silence.

"Well, father?" he said.

"A former letter was lost, it seems. This should have come in the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac:

thousand for the contract, six thousand on the sale of the house, fifteen thousand in all--better not be angry."

He closed the door, cast on Madame Evangelista the cool look of a business man, and said:--

"Madame, having, for your sake, passed--as I did--the proper limits of legal craft, do you seriously intend to reward my devotion by such language?"

"But, monsieur--"

"Madame, I did not, it is true, calculate the effect of the deeds of gift. But if you do not wish Comte Paul for your son-in-law you are not obliged to accept him. The contract is not signed. Give your fete,

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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

whether they liked caraway seeds or not!

* * * * * *

One day when the tiny little girls were all in a row eating cakes, Sister Angela, sitting on a bench under the magnolia, said quite suddenly: ``Good morning!''

She rose up from her seat under the great magnolia.

Then the little brown birds fluttered up from the gravel.

Then all the little girls looked up.

There stood two pretty grown-up people.