Today's Stichomancy for Mel Gibson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving:

husband sets out to avenge his honour; these are the methods of the assassin! With your wife's help you could have caught Aubert in flagrante delicto and killed him on the spot, and the law would have absolved you. Instead of which you decoy him into a hideous snare. Public opinion suggests that jealousy of your former assistant's success, and mortification at your own failure, were the real motives. Or was it not perhaps that you had been in the habit of rendering somewhat dubious services to some of your promiscuous clients?

Fenayrou: Nothing of the kind, I swear it!

President: Do not protest too much. Remember that among your

A Book of Remarkable Criminals

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

these passages as they appeared to us in the moment of their birth, and reserve all that I since discovered for the time of its discovery. For I have now come to one of the dark parts of my narrative, and must engage the reader's indulgence for my patron.

All the 27th that rigorous weather endured: a stifling cold; the folk passing about like smoking chimneys; the wide hearth in the hall piled high with fuel; some of the spring birds that had already blundered north into our neighbourhood, besieging the windows of the house or trotting on the frozen turf like things distracted. About noon there came a blink of sunshine, showing a very pretty, wintry, frosty landscape of white hills and woods,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber:

a fraction of an inch. Then he remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, carefully. And at that she gave a tremulous cry, and rushed around the table to him.

"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent and kissed the rough coat sleeve.

"Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!"

"Oh, Orville, listen----"

"Yes."

"Listen, Orville----"

"I'm listening, Terry."

"I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got

One Basket

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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy:

expectation of that awakening. Apropos of the "Circle of Reading," I cannot refrain from relating a characteristic incident which I was told by one of my sisters. When my father had made up his mind to compile that collection of the sayings of the wise, to which he gave the name of "Circle of Reading," he told one of his friends about it. A few days afterward this friend came to see him again, and at once told him that he and his wife had been thinking over his scheme for the new book and had come to the conclusion that he ought to call it "For Every Day," instead of "Circle of Reading."