Today's Stichomancy for Mike Myers

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle:

"Ah, me!" said the other, "only yesterday I had a son, tall and handsome like yourself. But the queen took him to sup with her, and I am left all alone in my old age, like a tree stripped of leaves and fruit."

"But surely," said the prince, "it can be no such sad matter to sup with a queen. That is an honor that most men covet."

"Ah!" said the old man, "you are a stranger in this place, or else you would know that no youth so chosen to sup with the queen ever returns to his home again."

"Yes," said the prince, "I am a stranger and have only come hither this day, and so do not understand these things. Even when

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells:

It was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last scramble.

`But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.

`I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and

The Time Machine

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson:

glade. It was lighted by the strong moon and by the flames of a fire. In the midst, there stood a little low and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of Hoodoo. Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed one upon another. Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring of kneeling Africans, both

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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton:

authoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity, how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--he had seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost humble. That was Coral ....

Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: "You've had no letters since you've been on board."

He looked at her, surprised. "No--thank the Lord!" he laughed.

"And you haven't written one either," she continued in her hard statistical tone.