Today's Stichomancy for Cary Grant

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator:

by hearing and we use the sense of hearing in giving instruction?

CRITIAS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And since medicine frees the sick man from his disease, that art too may sometimes appear useful in the acquisition of virtue, e.g. when hearing is procured by the aid of medicine.

CRITIAS: Very likely.

SOCRATES: But if, again, we obtain by wealth the aid of medicine, shall we not regard wealth as useful for virtue?

CRITIAS: True.

SOCRATES: And also the instruments by which wealth is procured?

CRITIAS: Certainly.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

of the romance. A paragraph in The opening chapter has perhaps assisted this delusion that there must have been a single original House of the Seven Gables, framed by flesh-and-blood carpenters; for it runs thus:-

Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection--for it has been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as the scene of events more full of interest perhaps than those of a gray feudal castle--familiar as it stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine."

House of Seven Gables

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac:

her, but she turned round, as if enraged, and with her sharp teeth caught hold of my leg--gently, I daresay; but I, thinking she would devour me, plunged my dagger into her throat. She rolled over, giving a cry that froze my heart; and I saw her dying, still looking at me without anger. I would have given all the world--my cross even, which I had not got then--to have brought her to life again. It was as though I had murdered a real person; and the soldiers who had seen my flag, and were come to my assistance, found me in tears.'

" 'Well sir,' he said, after a moment of silence, 'since then I have been in war in Germany, in Spain, in Russia, in France; I've certainly carried my carcase about a good deal, but never have I seen anything

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 Richard III by William Shakespeare:

And at Northampton they do rest to-night; To-morrow or next day they will be here. DUCHESS. I long with all my heart to see the Prince. I hope he is much grown since last I saw him. QUEEN ELIZABETH. But I hear no; they say my son of York Has almost overta'en him in his growth. YORK. Ay, mother; but I would not have it so. DUCHESS. Why, my good cousin, it is good to grow. YORK. Grandam, one night as we did sit at supper, My uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow More than my brother. 'Ay,' quoth my uncle Gloucester

Richard III