Today's Stichomancy for Edward Norton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis:

slavery, knows that the wage system is not real slavery; it's not the genuine, lash-driven, bloodhound-hunted, swamp-sick African slavery. None is genuine without Simon Legree and the Louisiana bloodhounds. The silk-socked wage slave, toiling eight hours for six dollars, is not the genuine old New Orleans molasses slave. He may carry a band and give a daily street parade, but if he's not accompanied by Simon Legree and the bloodhounds, he is not a genuine Uncle Tom, his slavery is less than skin deep. You can't fool me. I know what real slavery is. I know as much about slavery as the man that made it. He's the guy that taught me. I worked under Simon Legree in Louisiana.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac:

Sceaux" without seeing the young Englishman who had dropped from the skies to pervade and beautify her dreams. Though nothing spurs on a young girl's infant passion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a time when Mademoiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her strange and secret search, almost despairing of the success of an enterprise whose singularity may give some idea of the boldness of her temper. In point of fact, she might have wandered long about the village of Chatenay without meeting her Unknown. The fair Clara--since that was the name Emilie had overheard--was not English, and the stranger who escorted her did not dwell among the flowery and fragrant bowers of Chatenay.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:

through so many yesterdays when I strove with Death that I have realised to its full the wisdom of that sentence; and it is to me not merely a figure of speech, but a literal fact. Any to-morrow I might die. It is scarcely two months since I came back from the grave: is it worth while to be anything but radiantly glad? Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament has given me I prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."

Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like the birds, with a song in my heart." A spirit of too much fire in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in

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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson:

to crack."

I suppose she stayed ten minutes in the house, but when she came forth I observed two things - that her eyes were reddened, and a silver brooch was gone out of her bosom. This very much affected me.

"I never saw you so well adorned," said I.

"O Davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!" said she, and was more than usually sharp to me the remainder of the day.

About candlelight we came home from this excursion.

For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona - my Miss Grant remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries. At last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in