Today's Stichomancy for Hugh Grant

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

Then when that hour was exactly passed Sister Angela always came with a basket of netted canes, an Indian basket, on her arm. In the Indian basket were little cakes--such nice little cakes--always they had caraway seeds in them.

One day Sister Mary Felice said: ``Sister Angela, did Sister Ignatius put too many caraway seeds in the cakes this time?''

Sister Angela said: ``I think not, Sister Mary Felice. Will you try one?''

Sister Mary Felice said: ``I thank you, Sister Angela.''

Then Sister Mary Felice took one to try.

Then always Sister Angela, with the Indian basket on her arm, took

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley:

classes of facts, which, though spiritual and not physical, are just as much facts, and facts for science, as those which concern a stone or a fungus. They mistook for merely complicated traditional customs, many most sacred institutions which were just as much founded on reason and natural law, as any theories of their own. But who shall say that their method was not correct? That it was not the only method? They appealed to reason. Would you have had them appeal to unreason? They appealed to natural law. Would you have had them appeal to unnatural law?--law according to which God did not make this world? Alas! that had been done too often already. Solomon saw it done in his time, and called it folly, to

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther:

difficult for me to stop from worshipping the saints as I was so steeped in it to have nearly drowned. But the light of the gospel is now shining so brightly that from now on no one has an excuse for remaining in the darkness. We all very well know what we are to do.

This is itself a very risky and blasphemous way to worship for people are easily accustomed to turning away from Christ. They learn quickly to trust more in the saints than in Christ himself. When our nature is already all to prone to run from God and Christ, and trust in humanity, it is indeed difficult to learn to trust in God and Christ, even though we have vowed to do so and

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 The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac:

the town, or by contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A mercantile superstition, natural enough to the different possessors of the building, far-famed among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them scrupulous to preserve the title.

Hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, the master of the Red Inn came out upon the threshold of his door.

"By heavens! gentlemen," he cried, "a little later and you'd have had to sleep beneath the stars, like a good many more of your compatriots