Today's Stichomancy for John Carpenter

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac:

considered indispensable. The Observer is forty years of age, never dines at home, declares himself no longer dangerous to women, wears a maroon coat, and has a place reserved for him in several boxes at the "Bouffons." He is sometimes confounded with the Parasite; but he has filled too many real functions to be thought a sponger; moreover he possesses a small estate in a certain department, the name of which he has never been known to utter.

"Madame Firmiani? why, my dear fellow, she was Murat's former mistress." This man belongs to the Contradictors,--persons who note errata in memoirs, rectify dates, correct facts, bet a hundred to one, and are certain about everything. You can easily detect them in some

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

pocket edition of his father. He had a T'ao of books which I recognized as the Fifteen Magic Blocks, one of the most ingenious, if not the most remarkable, books I have ever seen. A T'ao is two or any number of volumes of a book wrapped in a single cover. In this case it was two volumes. In the inside of the cover there was a depression three inches square in which was kept a piece of lead, wood or pasteboard, divided into fifteen pieces as in the following illustration.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot:

who wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough, or bring back the milk, and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the knots in the hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the applicants brought silver in their palms. Silas might have driven a profitable trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on this condition was no temptation to him: he had never known an impulse towards falsity, and he drove one after another away with growing irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had spread even to Tarley, and it was long before people ceased to take long walks for the sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was at length changed into dread, for no one believed him

Silas Marner

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 Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

You must not take for fire. For this time Daughter, Be somewhat scanter of your Maiden presence; Set your entreatments at a higher rate, Then a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet, Beleeue so much in him, that he is young, And with a larger tether may he walke, Then may be giuen you. In few, Ophelia, Doe not beleeue his vowes; for they are Broakers, Not of the eye, which their Inuestments show: But meere implorators of vnholy Sutes, Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds,

Hamlet