Today's Stichomancy for Louis B. Mayer

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James:

have minded them so much on a weekday - were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment that the head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. He had caught a glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache and a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promised himself to study these denotements on the first occasion. His superficial sense was that their owner might have passed for a lucky stockbroker - a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a sanitary suburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the impression already derived from his wife. Paul's glance, after a moment, travelled back to this lady, and he saw how her own had

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and

Walden

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche:

And I answered: "They mocked me when I found and walked in mine own path; and certainly did my feet then tremble.

And thus did they speak unto me: Thou forgottest the path before, now dost thou also forget how to walk!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about their mockery! Thou art one who hast unlearned to obey: now shalt thou command!

Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great things.

To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to command great things.

Thus Spake Zarathustra

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 Hiero by Xenophon:

disbursement more legitimate[1] than those expended on his personal account. But let us look into the question point by point.

[1] {eis to deon}. Holden cf. "Anab." I. iii. 8. Aristoph. "Clouds," 859, {osper Periklees eis to deon apolesa}: "Like Pericles, for a necessary purpose, I have lost them."

First, the palace: do you imagine that a building, beautified in every way at an enormous cost, will afford you greater pride and ornament than a whole city ringed with walls and battlements, whose furniture consists of temples and pillared porticoes,[2] harbours, market- places?

[2] Reading {parastasi}, properly "pillasters" (Poll. i. 76. 10. 25) =