Today's Stichomancy for Eddie Murphy

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic:

refusal to let them inside his guard, they sedulously kept it from him. The consciousness that everybody was afraid of him,--that everybody would kneel to him, and meekly take insult and ignominy from him, if only hope remained to them of getting something out of him,--hardened like a crust upon his mind.

It was impossible to get a sense of companionship from people who cringed to him, and swallowed his affronts and cackled at his jokes with equal docility. Sometimes he had a passing amusement in the rough pleasantries and cruelties which they drew from him. There were two or three bright

The Market-Place

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

of her errand. She gave the Savoy address mechanically and, huddled in a corner, gave way to wild and fearful misgivings.

Coming up she had sat on top of the bus and watched with wide curious, eyes the strange traffic of London. The park had fascinated her - the little groups of drilling men in khaki, the mellow tones of a bugle, and here and there on the bridle paths well-groomed men and women on horseback, as clean-cut as the horses they rode, and on the surface as careless of what was happening across the Channel. But she saw nothing now. She sat back and twisted Harvey's ring on her finger, and saw herself going back, her work undone, her faith in herself shattered. And Harvey's arms and the Leete house ready to receive her.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

Which there together with us had remained.

My sight was following up their semblances, And followed till the medium, by excess, The passing farther onward took from it;

Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed From gazing upward, said to me: "Cast down Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round."

Since the first time that I had downward looked, I saw that I had moved through the whole arc Which the first climate makes from midst to end;

So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

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 Cromwell by William Shakespeare:

GARDINER. Well hath your Grace said, my Lord of Norfolk; Therefore let us presently to Lambeth. Thether comes Cromwell from the Court to night. Let us arrest him, send him to the Tower, And in the morning, cut off the traitor's head.

NORFOLK. Come, then, about it, let us guard the town. This is the day that Cromwell must go down.

GARDINER. Along, my Lords.--Well, Cromwell is half dead;