Today's Stichomancy for Charlie Chaplin

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

over night after night, seeing them rise up before me imploring forgiveness which I may not grant; to mark the writhing of the assassin and the last shriek of his victim; to listen to appalling noises and fearful silence, the silence of a father devouring his dead sons; to wonder at the laughter of the damned; to look for some human form among the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words such as living men may not hear without dying; to call perpetually on the dead, and always to accuse and condemn!--Is that living?"

"Cease!" cried Godefroid; "I cannot see you or hear you any further! My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You light a fire within me which consumes me."

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters:

Thou'lt fell the tree that checks thy course, And burst through brier and thorn: And, pausing by the river's side, Poor reasoner! thou wilt deem, By casting pebbles in its tide, To cross the swelling stream.

Right through the flinty rock thou'lt try Thy toilsome way to bore, Regardless of the pathway nigh That would conduct thee o'er Not only art thou, then, unkind,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather:

father's, wasn't it?" Alexandra went on stitching. "Yes. It was one of the first things he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the time he died. No one ever blamed him for grandfather's dis- grace. I can see him now, sitting there on Sun- days, in his white shirt, writing pages and

O Pioneers!

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 Macbeth by William Shakespeare:

Gent. Why it stood by her: she ha's light by her continually, 'tis her command

Doct. You see her eyes are open

Gent. I, but their sense are shut

Doct. What is it she do's now? Looke how she rubbes her hands

Gent. It is an accustom'd action with her, to seeme thus washing her hands: I haue knowne her continue in this a quarter of an houre

Lad. Yet heere's a spot

Doct. Heark, she speaks, I will set downe what comes

Macbeth