Today's Stichomancy for Edward Norton

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost:

"While we were getting ready for our departure, I heard someone knock at the street door. I felt convinced that it must be G---- M----; and in the heat of the moment, I told Manon, that as sure as he appeared I would take his life. In truth, I felt that I was not sufficiently recovered from my late excitement to be able to restrain my fury if I met him. Marcel put an end to my uneasiness, by handing me a letter which he had received for me at the door; it was from M. de T----.

"He told me that, as G---- M---- had gone to his father's house for the money which he wanted, he had taken advantage of his absence to communicate to me an amusing idea that had just come

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson:

reply, looking on her handsome father, 'I thought they had been better looking.'

This first visit to the Austins took place in 1855; and it seems it was some time before Fleeming began to know his mind; and yet longer ere he ventured to show it. The corrected quantity, to those who knew him well, will seem to have played its part; he was the man always to reflect over a correction and to admire the castigator. And fall in love he did; not hurriedly but step by step, not blindly but with critical discrimination; not in the fashion of Romeo, but before he was done, with all Romeo's ardour and more than Romeo's faith. The high favour to which he presently

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas:

bringing with it all those savoury remembrances, which are like perfumes more than thoughts. Between the past and the present was an ineffable abyss. But imagination has the wings of an angel of light and travels safely through or over the seas where we have been almost shipwrecked, the darkness in which our illusions are lost, the precipice whence our happiness has been hurled and swallowed up. He remembered that all the first part of his life had been embittered by a woman and he thought with alarm of the influence love might assume over so fine, and at the same time so vigorous an organization as that of Raoul.

Twenty Years After

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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln:

of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-- all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.

Second Inaugural Address