Today's Stichomancy for Eddie Murphy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker:

sort of thing in the room?"

"The only thing I remember was a sort of green light--very clouded, very dim--which came up from the well. Not a fixed light, but intermittent and irregular--quite unlike anything I had ever seen."

"Do you remember how you got into the well-room? Was there a separate door from outside, or was there any interior room or passage which opened into it?"

"I think there must have been some room with a way into it. I remember going up some steep steps; they must have been worn smooth by long use or something of the kind, for I could hardly keep my feet as I went up. Once I stumbled and nearly fell into the well-

Lair of the White Worm

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin:

the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the 'Pall Mall Gazette' has become a mere party paper--like the rest; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.)

{22} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

{23} I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll:

But it wasna prepaid," said that high-born maid, "Sae I gar'd them tak' it awa'."

"O ever alack that ye sent it back, It was written sae clerkly and well! Now the message it brought, and the boon that it sought, I must even say it mysel'."

Then up and spake the popinjay, Sae wisely counselled he. "Now say it in the proper way: Gae doon upon thy knee!"

The lover he turned baith red and pale,

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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac:

return but contemptuous glances; all were made to feel the shock of that insulting indifference which, like a spring frost, destroys the germs of flattering hopes. Beaux, wits, and fops, men whose sentiments are fed by sucking their canes, those of a great name, or a great fame, those of the highest or the lowest rank in her own world, they all blanch before her. She has conquered the right to converse as long and as often as she chooses with the men who seem to her agreeable, without being entered on the tablets of gossip. Certain coquettish women are capable of following a plan of this kind for seven years in order to gratify their fancies later; but to suppose any such reservations in the Marquise de Listomere would be to calumniate her.