Today's Stichomancy for Tom Leykis

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

"Do you suppose she has some suspicion of me?"

Miss Tita's honest eyes gave me no sign that I had touched a mark. "I shouldn't think so--letting you in after all so easily."

"Oh, so easily! she has covered her risk. But where is it that one could take an advantage of her?"

"I oughtn't to tell you if I knew, ought I?" And Miss Tita added, before I had time to reply to this, smiling dolefully, "Do you think we have any weak points?"

"That's exactly what I'm asking. You would only have to mention them for me to respect them religiously."

She looked at me, at this, with that air of timid but candid

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon:

than any other that can be named." As to the scheme itself see Grote, "Plato," III. ch. xxxix.; Boeckh, op. cit. (pp. 4, 37, 136, 600 seq. Eng. tr.) Cf. Demosth. "de Sym." for another scheme, 354 B.C., which shows the "sound administrative and practical judgment" of the youthful orator as compared with "the benevolent dreams and ample public largess in which Xenophon here indulges." --Grote, op. cit. p. 601.

[17] L40:12:4 = 1000 drachmae.

[18] I.e. exactly 18 or nearly 20 per cent. The following table will make the arithmetic clear:--

6 ob. = 1 drachma 10 minae = 6000 ob.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac:

last refuge where the old French wit has found a home, with its reserved depths, its myriad subtle byways, and its exquisite politeness. You will there still find grace of manner notwithstanding the conventionalities of courtesy, perfect freedom of talk notwithstanding the reserve which is natural to persons of breeding, and, above all, a liberal flow of ideas. No one there thinks of keeping his thought for a play; and no one regards a story as material for a book. In short, the hideous skeleton of literature at bay never stalks there, on the prowl for a clever sally or an interesting subject.

The memory of one of these evenings especially dwells with me, less by

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 1984 by George Orwell:

right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Chapter 8

From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting coffee--real coffee, not Victory Coffee--came floating out into the street.

1984