Today's Stichomancy for Jet Li

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde:

more real than reality itself, and of loftier and more noble import - who shall set limits to him? Not the apostles of that new Journalism which is but the old vulgarity 'writ large.' Not the apostles of that new Puritanism, which is but the whine of the hypocrite, and is both writ and spoken badly. The mere suggestion is ridiculous. Let us leave these wicked people, and proceed to the discussion of the artistic qualifications necessary for the true critic.

ERNEST. And what are they? Tell me yourself.

GILBERT. Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic - a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare:

Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love: Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me. My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is; Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine, Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is: If broken, then it is no fault of mine. If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To break an oath, to win a paradise?

IV.

Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer:

was crouching. Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught to disperse what little remained. It will have settled on the floor now. I will go and open both windows."

Nayland raised his haggard face.

"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton," he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?-- contemptuously devoted the surplus to me. His contempt is justified. I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant. It is by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."

CHAPTER XIII

I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

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 Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas:

had taken away the key of his own private apartment, and as he knew Aramis was a very particular man, and had generally many things to conceal in his apartment, he had not been surprised. He, therefore, although it appeared comparatively even harder, attacked the bed as bravely as he had done the fowl; and, as he had as good an inclination to sleep as he had had to eat, he took scarcely longer time to be snoring harmoniously than he had employed in picking the last bones of the bird.

Since he was no longer in the service of any one, D'Artagnan had promised himself to indulge in sleeping as soundly as he

Ten Years Later