Today's Stichomancy for Dan Brown

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine:

finality.

Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know then what I am like?"

"One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he ventured lightly.

"And what am I like?" she asked indolently.

"I'm hoping to know that better soon--I merely guess now."

"They say all women are egoists--and some men." She breathed her soft inscrutable ripple of laughter. "Let me hasten to confess, and crave a picture of myself."

"But the subject deserves an artist," he parried.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft:

it very dark, and cold, and raining. He missed me for the first time on the journey. On all previous occasions, as soon as the train stopped, I was at hand to assist him. This caused many slaveholders to praise me very much: they said they had never before seen a slave so attentive to his master: and therefore my absence filled him with terror and confusion; the children of Israel could not have felt more troubled on arriving at the Red Sea. So he asked the conductor if he had seen anything of his slave. The man being somewhat of an abo-

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:

Or to dispraise my Lord with that same tongue Which she hath prais'd him with aboue compare, So many thousand times? Go Counsellor, Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twaine: Ile to the Frier to know his remedie, If all else faile, my selfe haue power to die.

Exeunt.

Enter Frier and Countie Paris.

Fri. On Thursday sir? the time is very short

Par. My Father Capulet will haue it so, And I am nothing slow to slack his hast

Romeo and Juliet

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 Summer by Edith Wharton:

A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emerged from the background, as if buoyed up on his broad white gown, and briskly dominated the bowed heads in the front rows. He prayed energetically and briefly and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas warned the girls that they were to follow at once with "Home, Sweet Home." It was a joy to Charity to sing: it seemed as though, for the first time, her secret rapture might burst from her and flash its defiance at the world. All the glow in her blood, the breath of the summer earth, the rustle of the forest, the fresh