Today's Stichomancy for Halle Berry

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

The Councillor rose suddenly from his chair. "Who are you? What news is it you bring?" he asked with a voice that began to tremble.

Muller raised his head sharply as if his decision had been made, and his kind intelligent eyes grew soft as they rested on the pale face of the stately man before him. "I belong to the Secret Police and I am compelled to find out the secrets of others - not because of my profession - no, because my own nature compels me - I must do it. I have just come from Vienna and I bring the last of the proofs necessary to turn you over to the courts. And yet you are a thousand times better than the coward who stole the honour of your wife and who hid behind the shelter of the law - and therefore,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon:

he feels, he must maintain the strictist watch.[7] Again, to the private citizen there will come eventually, either through truce or terms of peace, respite from war; but for the tyrant, the day of peace will never dawn. What peace can he have with those over whom he exercises his despotic sway?[8] Nor have the terms of truce been yet devised, on which the despotic ruler may rely with confidence.[9]

[5] {koinon}, i.e. making demands upon the eneriges of all the citizens in common, as opposed to the personal character of war as conducted by a despot = "public," "patriotic," "national" war. Al. borne by the particular {polis} as member of a league, whether of states united for the time being in a {summakhia}, or permanently

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James:

through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider world all the same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting and subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary naturalistic world; we should be liable

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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the nurses mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They receive an extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,--and they are not the less grateful because they understand. And when everything is over they lay away in the bedside stand the gloves they will never wear, and divide the extra orange with a less fortunate one who is almost recovered. Their last Christmas is past.

"How beautiful the tree was!" they say. Or, "Did you hear how the children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--of angels."