Today's Stichomancy for Eva Mendes

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac:

asked the haughty damsel of the handsome cavalier.

"No, no, noble maiden. . . . Listen!" and he caught her by the waist and said in her ear, "I can swim, say nothing about it! I will hold you by your fair hair and bring you safely to the shore; but I can only save you."

The girl looked at her aged mother. The lady was on her knees entreating absolution of the Bishop, who did not heed her. In the beautiful eyes the knight read a vague feeling of filial piety, and spoke in a smothered voice.

"Submit yourself to the will of God. If it is His pleasure to take your mother to Himself, it will doubtless be for her happiness--in

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf:

against the world. But she had somehow risen to be mistress in her own kingdom, assuming her sovereignty unconsciously.

Steps approached her unheard. It is true that they were steps that lingered, divagated, and mounted with the deliberation natural to one past sixty whose arms, moreover, are full of leaves and blossoms; but they came on steadily, and soon a tap of laurel boughs against the door arrested Katharine's pencil as it touched the page. She did not move, however, and sat blank-eyed as if waiting for the interruption to cease. Instead, the door opened. At first, she attached no meaning to the moving mass of green which seemed to enter the room independently of any human agency. Then she recognized parts of her

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli:

Serravalle: thus he and the Florentines commenced the ascent of the hill at the same time in the morning. Castruccio sent forward his infantry by the main road, and a troop of four hundred horsemen by a path on the left towards the castle. The Florentines sent forward four hundred cavalry ahead of their army which was following, never expecting to find Castruccio in possession of the hill, nor were they aware of his having seized the castle. Thus it happened that the Florentine horsemen mounting the hill were completely taken by surprise when they discovered the infantry of Castruccio, and so close were they upon it they had scarcely time to pull down their visors. It was a case of unready soldiers being attacked by ready, and they were

The Prince

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 On Revenues by Xenophon:

Hellenes, that we obtained the headship of the naval forces, and the trusteeship of the treasury of Hellas?[11] Again, when through the too cruel exercise of her presidency, as men thought, Athens was deprived of her empire, is it not the case that even in those days,[12] as soon as we held aloof from injustice we were once more reinstated by the islanders, of their own free will, as presidents of the naval force? Nay, did not the very Thebans, in return for certain benefits, grant to us Athenians to exercise leadership over them?[13] And at another date the Lacedaemonans suffered us Athenians to arrange the terms of hegemony[14] at our discretion, not as driven to such submission, but in requital of kindly treatment. And to-day, owing to the chaos[15]