Today's Stichomancy for Julia Roberts

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson:

extraordinarily rich and plenty, with biscuits and salt beef every day, and pea-soup and puddings made of flour and suet twice a week, so that Keola grew fat. The captain also was a good man, and the crew no worse than other whites. The trouble was the mate, who was the most difficult man to please Keola had ever met with, and beat and cursed him daily, both for what he did and what he did not. The blows that he dealt were very sore, for he was strong; and the words he used were very unpalatable, for Keola was come of a good family and accustomed to respect. And what was the worst of all, whenever Keola found a chance to sleep, there was the mate awake and stirring him up with a rope's end. Keola saw it would never

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini:

in a sack, all of which in twenty-four hours are resolved. Once in three weeks he voids a great quantity of sand, after which he has a fresh appetite for these stones, as we have for our victuals, and by these, with a cup of beer, and a pipe of tobacco, he has his whole subsistence.

From a modern point of view the Doctor ``looks easy.''

The Book of Wonderful Characters continues:

Platerus speaks of a beggar boy, who

Miracle Mongers and Their Methods

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

word ending in -ism or -asm than I have for one ending in -ation or - ality. But while fanaticism and enthusiasm are being defined--a work more difficult than is commonly fancied--we will go on to consider another answer. We are told that the strength of Islam lay in the hope of their sensuous Paradise and fear of their sensuous Gehenna. If so, this is the first and last time in the world's history that the strength of any large body of people--perhaps of any single man--lay in such a hope. History gives us innumerable proofs that such merely selfish motives are the parents of slavish impotence, of pedantry and conceit, of pious frauds, often of the most devilish cruelty: but, as far as my reading extends, of nothing better. Moreover, the Christian Greeks had

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 Complete Angler by Izaak Walton:

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie; My music shews you have your closes, And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season'd timber, never gives, But when the whole world turns to coal, Then chiefly lives.

Venator. I thank you, good master, for your good direction for fly- fishing, and for the sweet enjoyment of the pleasant day, which is so far