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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

but she encouraged her men to talk, and she always listened attentively, even when they seemed to be talking foolishly. To-day Barney Flinn, the big red-headed Irishman who had been with Alexandra for five years and who was actually her foreman, though he had no such title, was grumbling about the new silo she had put up that spring. It hap- pened to be the first silo on the Divide, and Alexandra's neighbors and her men were skep-

O Pioneers!

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades:

(July, 1880) by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, in the Dunn-Gardinier collection, lot 1592:--

"TITLEPAGES AND FRONTISPIECES.

_A Collection of upwards of_ 800 ENGRAVED TITLES AND FRONTISPIECES, ENGLISH AND FOREIGN (_some very fine and curious) taken from old books and neatly mounted on cartridge paper in 3 vol, half morocco gilt. imp. folio_."

The only collection of title-pages which has afforded me unalloyed pleasure is a handsome folio, published by the directors of the Plantin Museum, Antwerp, in 1877, just after the purchase of that wonderful typographical storehouse. It is called "Titels en Portretten gesneden naar P. P. Rubens voor de

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

verbal imagery, embrace Mother Earth, with that subtle suggestion of humanity which in Aryan speech the gender of the nouns hints without expressing, is not due to any lack of poesy in the Far Oriental speaker, but to the essential impersonality of his mind, embodied now in the very character of the words he uses. A Japanese noun is a crystallized concept, handed down unchanged from the childhood of the Japanese race. So primitive a conception does it represent that it is neither a total nor a partial symbol, but rather the outcome of a first vague generality. The word "man," for instance, means to them not one man, still less mankind, but that indefinite idea which struggles for embodiment in the utterance of the infant.

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 Hellenica by Xenophon:

retaliate by an attack on Locris. These expectations were fulfilled. The Phocians immediately invaded Locris and seized moneys on their side with ample interest. Then Androcleidas and his friends lost no time in persuading the Thebans to assist the Locrians, on the ground that it was no debatable district which had been entered by the Phocians, but the admittedly friendly and allied territory of Locris itself. The counter-invasion of Phocis and pillage of their country by the Thebans promptly induced the Phocians to send an embassy to Lacedaemon. In claiming assistance they explained that the war was not of their own seeking, but that they had attacked the Locrians in self- defence. On their side the Lacedaemonians were glad enough to seize a