Today's Stichomancy for Peter Jackson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov:

face and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he had once been famous and which was truly charming. "Pavel Andreitch, I speak to you as a friend: try to be different! One is ill at ease with you, my dear fellow, one really is!"

He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded away, his eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly:

"Yes, yes. . . . Excuse an old man. . . . It's all nonsense . . . yes."

As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to balance himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain:

in some useful employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her.

And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

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 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain:

ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril."

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in con- versation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then ap-

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court