Today's Stichomancy for Groucho Marx

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne:

that they should dig out for themselves some subterraneous pits similar to "silos," such as are used as receptacles for grain. They presumed that when the surface of Gallia should be covered by a thick layer of ice, which is a bad conductor of heat, a sufficient amount of warmth for animal vitality might still be retained in excavations of this kind. After a long consultation they failed to devise any better expedient, and were forced to resign themselves to this species of troglodyte existence.

In one respect they congratulated themselves that they should be better off than many of the whalers in the polar seas, for as it is impossible to get below the surface of a frozen ocean, these adventurers have to seek refuge in huts of wood and snow erected on their ships,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac:

face. When she seemed to me to have opened her whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with the first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity, and told her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told her how and why it was that he had given me this fatal message. Then her tears were dried by the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She grew even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my pillow and held them out to her, she took them mechanically; then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a hollow voice:

"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!--

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

GLOSTER. Now fetch me a stool hither by and by.--Now, sirrah, if you mean to save yourself from whipping, leap me over this stool and run away.

SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I am not able to stand alone; You go about to torture me in vain.

[Enter a Beadle with whips.]

GLOSTER. Well, sir, we must have you find your legs.-- Sirrah beadle, whip him till he leap over that same stool.

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 Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis:

at least he would pay his own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre--I do not know what change a physician would have found in him, but the man was changed.

A clerk was needed in a provision shop on Green Street. George placed himself in the line of dirty, squalid applicants. The day was hot, the air of the shop was foul with the smells of rotting meat and vegetables. He felt himself stagger against a stall. He seemed to be