Today's Stichomancy for Steve McQueen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

with my heart going three-four time and skipping every sixth beat.

"Hello!" she said. "Lovely weather--for polar bears. If the natives wade through this all winter it's no wonder they walk as if they are ham-strung. Don't bother getting me a glass. I'll get my own."

She was making for the pantry when I caught her, and I guess I looked pretty wild.

"I'll get it," I said. "I--that's one of the rules."

She put her hands in the pockets of her white sweater and smiled at me.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.:

have sat in the dismal parlor, listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.

I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac:

Consult your friends; you'll see what they tell you."

"I need only consult my heart, madame."

"Ta, ta, ta! now don't talk to me about that little lady-killer Savinien. You'd pay too high a price for his name, and for that little moustache curled up at the points like two hooks, and his black hair. How do you expect to manage on seven thousand francs a year, with a man who made two hundred thousand francs of debt in two years? Besides --though this is a thing you don't know yet--all men are alike; and without flattering myself too much, I may say that my Desire is the equal of a king's son."

"You forget, madame, the danger your son is in at this moment; which

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 Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

To which I turned, I recognized therein The wish of speaking to me somewhat farther.

And it began: "In this fifth resting-place Upon the tree that liveth by its summit, And aye bears fruit, and never loses leaf,

Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet They came to Heaven, were of such great renown That every Muse therewith would affluent be.

Therefore look thou upon the cross's horns; He whom I now shall name will there enact What doth within a cloud its own swift fire."

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)