Today's Stichomancy for Dan Brown

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

flight of steps leading downward into Stygian gloom. Some twenty feet below, the level floor of the tunnel recommenced, and shortly afterward his progress was stopped by a heavy wooden door which was secured by massive wooden bars upon the side of Tarzan's approach. This fact suggested to the ape-man that he might surely be in a passageway leading to the outer world, for the bolts, barring progress from the opposite side, tended to substantiate this hypothesis, unless it were merely a prison to which it led.

Along the tops of the bars were deep layers of dust--a further indication that the passage had lain long unused. As he

The Return of Tarzan

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde:

And his heart beats but at the price of wool. Yet he is honest in his common way. [To Simone] And you, have you no shame? A gracious Prince Comes to our house, and you must weary him With most misplaced assurance. Ask his pardon.

SIMONE. I ask it humbly. We will talk to-night Of other things. I hear the Holy Father Has sent a letter to the King of France Bidding him cross that shield of snow, the Alps, And make a peace in Italy, which will be

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

of recognition. It was as though he had discovered some new species of living creature and was marveling at his find.

La was studying the ape-man's features. Slowly her large eyes opened very wide.

"Tarzan!" she exclaimed, and then, in the vernacular of the great apes which constant association with the anthropoids had rendered the common language of the Oparians: "You have come back to me! La has ignored the mandates of her religion, waiting, always waiting for Tarzan--for her Tarzan. She has taken no mate, for in

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar

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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke:

"Ship ahoy!" It is like a breeze laden with briny odours and a pleasant dash of spray. The miners in some parts of Germany have a good greeting for their dusky trade. They cry to one who is going down the shaft, "Gluck auf!" All the perils of an underground adventure and all the joys of seeing the sun again are compressed into a word. Even the trivial salutation which the telephone has lately created and claimed for its peculiar use--"Hello, hello"-- seems to me to have a kind of fitness and fascination. It is like a thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be attractive. There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It makes courtesy wait upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age when it is