Today's Stichomancy for Sidney Poitier

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

belongs to me. The lease is taken out in my name.'

"You know Maxime! He thought the coach-builder uncommonly green. Croizeau might pay all three bills, and get nothing for a long while; for Maxime felt more infatuated with Antonia than ever."

"I can well believe it," said La Palferine. "She is the /bella Imperia/ of our day."

"With her rough skin!" exclaimed Malaga; "so rough, that she ruins herself in bran baths!"

"Croizeau spoke with a coach-builder's admiration of the sumptuous furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a setting for his fair one, describing it all in detail with diabolical complacency for

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville:

And all be baptized and have diverse laws and diverse customs. But all believe in God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; but always fail they in some articles of our faith. Some of these be clept Jacobites, for Saint James converted them and Saint John baptized them. They say that a man shall make his confession only to God, and not to a man; for only to him should man yield him guilty of all that he hath misdone. Ne God ordained not, ne never devised, ne the prophet neither, that a man should shrive him to another (as they say), but only to God. As Moses writeth in the Bible, and as David saith in the Psalter Book; CONFITEBOR TIBI, DOMINE, IN TOTO CORDE MEO, and DELICTUM MEUM TIBI COGNITUM FECI,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley:

and Sinis, and Kerkuon, and Phaia the wild sow? Where are the fifty sons of Pallas? And this Minotaur shall go the road which they have gone, and Minos himself, if he dare stay me.'

'But how will you slay him, my son? For you must leave your club and your armour behind, and be cast to the monster, defenceless and naked like the rest.'

And Theseus said, 'Are there no stones in that labyrinth; and have I not fists and teeth? Did I need my club to kill Kerkuon, the terror of all mortal men?'

Then AEgeus clung to his knees; but he would not hear; and at

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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

What you have learned.

And that's over. Here you are, Battered by the past. Time will have his little scar, But the wound won't last. Nor shall harrowing surprise Find a world without its eyes If a star fades when the skies Are overcast.

God knows there are lives enough, Crushed, and too far gone