Today's Stichomancy for Matt Damon

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson:

an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood; they had an organisation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy; their affairs were 'the discourse of every coffee-house' in London; England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied and murdered; with colours and drums, and the singing of old French psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest:

things to eat An' there's just enough o' bitter in the blend to cut the sweet, But I run the whole list over, an' it seems somehow that I Find the keenest sort o' pleasure in a chunk o' raisin pie.

There are pies that start the water circulatin' in the mouth; There are pies that wear the flavor of the warm an' sunny south;

A Heap O' Livin'

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells:

new world in Wimblehurst with the chemist's shop as its hub, set to work at Latin and materia medica, and concentrated upon the present with all my heart. Wimblehurst is an exceptionally quiet and grey Sussex town rare among south of England towns in being largely built of stone. I found something very agreeable and picturesque in its clean cobbled streets, its odd turnings and abrupt corners; and in the pleasant park that crowds up one side of the town. The whole place is under the Eastry dominion and it was the Eastry influence and dignity that kept its railway station a mile and three-quarters away. Eastry House is so close that it dominates the whole; one goes across the

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 Memorabilia by Xenophon:

breasts, since even among beasts a certain natural craving, and sympathy springs up between creatures reared together.[2] Added to which, a man who has brothers commands more respect from the rest of the world than the man who has none, and who must fight his own battles.[3]

[1] Cf. "Merchant of Venice," II. viii. 17: "Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!"

[2] Or, "a yearning after their foster-brothers manifests itself in animals." See "Cyrop." VIII. vii. 14 foll. for a parallel to this discussion.

[3] Lit. "and is less liable to hostility."

The Memorabilia