Today's Stichomancy for Jay Leno

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon:

eagerly invite me to a share of it; but if ill betide them, helter- skelter off they go, and never once turn back,[79] so fearful are they I may set them laughing will he nill he.

[79] Plat. "Rep." 620 E; "Laws," 854 C.

Nic. Heavens! you have good reason to be proud; with me it is just the opposite. When any of my friends are doing well, they take good care to turn their backs on me,[80] but if ever it goes ill with them, they claim relationship by birth,[81] and will not let their long-lost cousin out of sight.

[80] Or, "they take good care to get out of my way," "they hold aloof from me entirely."

The Symposium

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost:

of either pardon or respite from the vengeance I had thus incurred. Aware, as I was, of the affection of the governor for his nephew, I felt perfectly sure that my death would not be delayed a single hour after his should become known. `Urgent as this apprehension was, it still was by no means the principal source of my uneasiness. Manon, the welfare of Manon, the peril that impended over her, and the certainty of my being now at length separated from her, afflicted me to such a degree, that I was incapable of recognising the place in which I stood. I regretted Synnelet's death: instant suicide seemed the only remedy for my woes.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe which had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel, which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking the road, a harsh, discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time, and added to the already violent confusion of the scene.

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in

The Great Gatsby

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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence:

powerful old castle was a ruin, yet it hung its bulk on the low sky-line, over the black plumes and the white that waved on the damp air below.

A turn, and they ran on the high level to Stacks Gate. Stacks Gate, as seen from the highroad, was just a huge and gorgeous new hotel, the Coningsby Arms, standing red and white and gilt in barbarous isolation off the road. But if you looked, you saw on the left rows of handsome 'modern' dwellings, set down like a game of dominoes, with spaces and gardens, a queer game of dominoes that some weird 'masters' were playing on the surprised earth. And beyond these blocks of dwellings, at the back, rose all the astonishing and frightening overhead

Lady Chatterley's Lover