Today's Stichomancy for Ben Affleck

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad:

have thrown up my new billet for a fortune. The mate looked me over carefully. He was also an old chap, but of another stamp. He had a Roman nose, a snow-white, long beard, and his name was Mahon, but he insisted that it should be pronounced Mann. He was well connected; yet there was something wrong with his luck, and he had never got on.

"As to the captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for

Youth

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

commissioner handed across the table to him. "May I not make it as easy as I can for Mr. Thorne - I mean, bring him here with as little publicity as possible? His wife is with him in Venice."

"Poor little woman, it's terrible! Do whatever you think best, Muller. You're a queer mixture. Here you've hounded this man down, followed hot on his trail when not a soul but yourself connected him in any way with the murder. And now you're sorry for him! A soft heart like yours is a dangerous possession for a police detective, Muller. It's no aid to our business."

"No, sir, I know that."

"Well take care it doesn't run away with you this time. Don't let

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson:

and reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a single field.

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 Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde:

deteriorated since I knew him first.

LADY MARKBY. [Reflecting.] You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly. I have known many instances of it

MABEL CHILTERN. What a dreadful prospect!

LADY MARKBY. Ah! my dear, you need not be nervous. You will always be as pretty as possible. That is the best fashion there is, and the only fashion that England succeeds in setting.

MABEL CHILTERN. [With a curtsey.] Thank you so much, Lady Markby, for England . . . and myself. [Goes out.]