Today's Stichomancy for Audrey Hepburn

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton:

Even Harney's image had been blurred by that crushing experience: she thought of him as so remote from her that he seemed hardly more than a memory. In her fagged and floating mind only one sensation had the weight of reality; it was the bodily burden of her child. But for it she would have felt as rootless as the whiffs of thistledown the wind blew past her. Her child was like a load that held her down, and yet like a hand that pulled her to her feet. She said to herself that she must get up and struggle on....

Her eyes turned back to the trail across the top of the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

else to tell me? Kindly allow me to forget the fact, or else to remain in ignorance of it, and I shall be much obliged to you." Whereafter the said landowner probably proceeds to spend on his diversion the money which ought to have gone towards the rehabilitation of his affairs.

Possibly the author may also incur censure at the hands of those so-called "patriots" who sit quietly in corners, and become capitalists through making fortunes at the expense of others. Yes, let but something which they conceive to be derogatory to their country occur--for instance, let there be published some book which voices the bitter truth--and out they will come from their hiding-places like a spider which perceives a fly to be caught in its web. "Is it well to

Dead Souls

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

I'd miserably failed. So I shut my eyes and set my teeth and turned my back. There's the whole pusillanimous truth of it!"

"Oh, if it's the WHOLE truth!----" She let him clasp her. "There's my torment, you see. I thought that was what your silence meant till I made you break it. Now I want to be sure that I was right."

"What can I tell you to make you sure?"

"You can let me tell YOU everything first." She drew away, but without taking her hands from him. "Owen saw you in Paris," she began.

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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson:

MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA [NOVEMBER 1879].

MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON, - Your letter to my father was forwarded to me by mistake, and by mistake I opened it. The letter to myself has not yet reached me. This must explain my own and my father's silence. I shall write by this or next post to the only friends I have who, I think, would have an influence, as they are both professors. I regret exceedingly that I am not in Edinburgh, as I could perhaps have done more, and I need not tell you that what I might do for you in the matter of the election is neither from friendship nor gratitude, but because you are the only man (I beg your pardon) worth a damn. I shall write to a third friend, now I