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 Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis:

catches me -- when it happens ----"

He plucked from his pocket a small phial and held it up toward the light and gazed upon it desperately and raptly.

"I am never without this!" he said. "It is my means of escape. I will not be taken unawares! I carry it always. At night it is beneath my pillow. The day it happens -- the moment I feel myself in the grip of Popularity----"

I caught his hand; in his excitement he was rais- ing the poison to his lips.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin:

the sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled by repetition of any common truisms about the preciousness of friends, and the influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and our companions wise,--and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion with which we choose both,--will be the general chances of our happiness and usefulness.

But, granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice! Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

and promises the certainty of personal immortality,--a terror to evildoers, and a sustaining sense of coming unalloyed happiness to the good. Through and through its teachings runs the feeling of the fullness of life, that desire which will not die, that wish of the soul which beats its wings against its earthly casement in its longing for expansion beyond the narrow confines of threescore years and ten.

Buddhism, on the contrary, is the cri du coeur of pessimism. This life, it says, is but a chain of sorrows. To multiply days is only to multiply evil. These desires that urge us on are really cause of all our woe. We think they are ourselves. We are

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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac:

who is free and in love; but she had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after she had heard Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper became a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating duets, Calabrian ballads, Spanish /sequidillas/, and Neapolitan /canzonettes/. Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music, in the hearts and voices of the guests. There was a sudden overflow of bewitching vivacity, of cordial unconstraint, of Italian good nature, of which no words can convey an idea to those who know only the evening parties of Paris, the routs of London, or the clubs of Vienna. Jests and words of love