Today's Stichomancy for Famke Janssen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy:

threatened with famine requires that that which has been the ordinary remedy under all similar circumstances should be resorted to now, namely, that there should be free access to the food of man from whatever quarter it may come.... Deprive me of office to-morrow, you can never deprive me of the consciousness that I have exercised the powers committed to me from no corrupt or interested motives, from no desire to gratify ambition, for no personal gain."

Then the sly author of the immortal Chapter on Christianity: "How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences [miracles] which were presented by Omnipotence? ... The sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and appeared unconscious

Jude the Obscure

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

"Certainly," said Aunt Jane. "There is but one way to do that. I will call on her myself."

"You, auntie?" said Hope.

"Yes, I," said her aunt. "I have owed her a call for five years. It is the only thing that will excite her so much as to put all else out of her head."

"O auntie!" said Hope, greatly relieved, "if you only would! But ought you really to go out? It is almost raining."

"I shall go," said Aunt Jane, decisively, "if it rains little boys!"

"But will not Mrs. Meredith wonder--?" began Hope.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft:

to see her, when his presence would be no intrusion on her grief, and so earnestly intreated to be allowed, according to promise, to beguile the tedious moments of absence, by dwelling on the events of her past life, that she sent him the memoirs which had been written for her daughter, promising Jemima the perusal as soon as he returned them.

CHAPTER 7

"ADDRESSING these memoirs to you, my child, uncertain whether I shall ever have an opportunity of instructing you, many observations will probably flow from my heart, which only a mother--a mother schooled in misery, could make.

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 Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair:

What must come first was education, and by this means a modification of morals. People must cease to treat syphilis as a mysterious evil, of which not even the name could be pronounced.

"But," objected the other, "one cannot lay it bare to children in our educational institutions!"

"Why not?" asked the doctor.

"Because, sir, there are curiosities which it would be imprudent to awaken."

The doctor became much excited whenever he heard this argument. "You believe that you are preventing these curiosities from awakening?" he demanded. "I appeal to those--both men and