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 The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln:

BENJAMIN A. CLYMER.

The widow read the note a number of times, then bethinking herself, she picked up the canceled check still lying in her lap, and turned it over. Long and intently she studied the signature - the peculiarly characteristic formation of the letter "B" caught and held her attention. As the seconds ticked themselves into minutes she sat immovable, her face as white as the hand on which she had bowed her head.

Across the hall Helen McIntyre tossed from one side to the other in her soft bed; her restless longing to get up was growing stronger and stronger. While Mrs. Brewster's deft fingers and the cooling cologne

The Red Seal

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare:

Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine, Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is: If broken, then it is no fault of mine. If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To break an oath, to win a paradise?

IV.

Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook With young Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green, Did court the lad with many a lovely look, Such looks as none could look but beauty's queen, She told him stories to delight his ear;

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon:

Hippias[101] of Elis, from whom he learnt his "art of memory";[102] since which time he has become a very ardent lover,[103] from inability to forget each lovely thing he sets his eyes on. And quite lately, if I am not mistaken, it was you who sounded in my ears such praise of our visitor from Heraclea,[104] that first you made me thirst for his society, and then united us.[105] For which indeed I am your debtor, since I find him a fine handsome fellow and true gentleman.[106] And did you not, moreover, sing the praises of Aeschylus of Phlius[107] in my ears and mine in his?--in fact, affected us so much by what you said, we fell in love and took to coursing wildly in pursuit of one another like two dogs upon a

The Symposium

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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter:

So we might go on rather indefinitely. I need hardly say that in more modern and civilized life, relics of the totem system are still to be found in the forms of the heraldic creatures adopted for their crests by different families, and in the bears, lions, eagles, the sun, moon and stars and so forth, which still adorn the flags and are flaunted as the insignia of the various nations. The names may not have been ORIGINALLY adopted from any definite belief in blood-relationship with the animal or other object in question; but when, as Robertson says (Pagan Christs, p. 104), a "savage learned that he was 'a Bear' and that

Pagan and Christian Creeds