Today's Stichomancy for Laurence Olivier

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke:

Thou hast given; take not Thy gift away from me, O my God! Spare the life of this my child, O Thou God, my Father, my Father!"

A deep hush followed the cry. "Listen!" whispered Athenais, breathlessly.

Was it an echo? It could not be, for it came again--the voice of the child, clear and low, waking from sleep, and calling: "Father!"

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS-TREE

The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot:

is summarily destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men, men of real genius, have during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even greater than, forty-five minutes: and the loss of their precious lives would have been an irreparable injury to the State. The art of healing also has achieved some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured. Advocating therefore a VIA MEDIA, I would lay down no fixed or absolute line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

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

agricultural pursuits.

[32] i.e. out of cultivation, whether as corn land or for fruit trees, viz. olive, fig, vine, etc.

[33] Or, "be it a dead thing or a live pet." Cf. Plat. "Theaet." 174 B; "Laws," 789 B, 790 D, 819 B; "C. I." 1709.

[34] Cf. "Horsem." iii. 1; and see Cowley's Essay above referred to.

[35] Or, "is susceptible of greater improvement."

[36] Or, "discovery." See "Anab." III. v. 12; "Hell." IV. v. 4; "Hunting," xiii. 13.

[37] Or, "nor did he rack his brains to discover it." See "Mem." III. v. 23. Cf. Aristoph. "Clouds," 102, {merimnophrontistai}, minute

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 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce:

constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which -- once, twice, and again -- he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge