Today's Stichomancy for Yoshitaka Amano

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare:

inter'gatories: demand them singly.

FIRST SOLDIER. Do you know this Captain Dumain?

PAROLLES. I know him: he was a botcher's 'prentice in Paris, from whence he was whipped for getting the shrieve's fool with child: a dumb innocent that could not say him nay.

[FIRST LORD lifts up his hand in anger.]

BERTRAM. Nay, by your leave, hold your hands; though I know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey:

it. She had loved, and in loving had escaped the evil of her day, if not its taint. She had lived only for herself. Conscience had awakened--but, alas! too late. She had overthrown the sordid, self-seeking habit of life; she had awakened to real womanhood; she had fought the insidious spell of modernity and she had defeated it; she had learned the thrill of taking root in new soil, the pain and joy of labor, the bliss of solitude, the promise of home and love and motherhood. But she had gathered all these marvelous things to her soul too late for happiness.

"Now it is answered," she declared aloud. "That is what has happened? . . . And all that is past. . . . Is there anything left? If so what?"

She flung her query out to the winds of the desert. But the desert seemed

The Call of the Canyon

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

admire the sideboards filled with curiosities and rarities fit to make a King of Saxony envious--"

"Now for the scene itself," said Desroches, and the deepest silence followed.

" 'Monsieur le Comte,' began Cerizet, 'I have come from a M. Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker--'

" 'Ah! poor devil, and what does he want with me?'

" 'Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, principal, interest, and costs--'

" 'Coutelier's business?' put in Maxime, who knew his affairs as a

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 Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

variations.

LADY HUNSTANTON. How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

LADY STUTFIELD. Thank you, thank you. It has been quite, quite entrancing. I must try and remember it all. There are such a number of details that are so very, very important.

LADY CAROLINE. But you have not told us yet what the reward of the Ideal Man is to be.

MRS. ALLONBY. His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.

LADY STUTFIELD. But men are so terribly, terribly exacting, are