Today's Stichomancy for Ringo Starr

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad:

startling--so excitable, so utterly unlike anything one had ever heard. The village boys climbed up the bank to have a peep through the little square aperture. Everybody was wondering what Mr. Swaffer would do with him.

"He simply kept him.

"Swaffer would be called eccentric were he not so much respected. They will tell you that Mr. Swaffer sits up as late as ten o'clock at night to read books, and they will tell you also that he can write a cheque for two hundred pounds without

Amy Foster

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare:

ENVY. Nay, stay, minion, there lies a block. What, all on mirth! I'll interrupt your tale And mix your music with a tragic end.

COMEDY. What monstrous ugly hag is this, That dares control the pleasures of our will? Vaunt, churlish cur, besmeared with gory blood, That seemst to check the blossoms of delight, And stifle the sound of sweet Bellona's breath: Blush, monster, blush, and post away with shame,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

And she lures her shameless sisters, So that from my weary eyelids Kindly sleep ere long is driven. From my couch then boldly spring I, And I seek the darling Muses, in the beechen-grove I find them, Full of pieasure to receive me; And to the tormenting insects Owe I many a golden hour. Thus be ye, unwelcome beings, Highly valued by the poet,

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 Aspern Papers by Henry James:

before her meeting with Jeffrey Aspern. She had lived with her father and sister in a queer old-fashioned, expatriated, artistic Bohemia, in the days when the aesthetic was only the academic and the painters who knew the best models for a contadina and pifferaro wore peaked hats and long hair. It was a society less furnished than the coteries of today (in its ignorance of the wonderful chances, the opportunities of the early bird, with which its path was strewn), with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery; so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have inherited many objects of importance. There was no enviable