Today's Stichomancy for Louis B. Mayer

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

PREMIER SOLDAT. Iokanaan.

LE CAPPADOCIEN. D'ou vient-il?

PREMIER SOLDAT. Du desert, ou il se nourrissait de sauterelles et de miel sauvage. Il etait vetu de poil de chameau, et autour de ses reins il portait une ceinture de cuir. Son aspect etait tres farouche. Une grande foule le suivait. Il avait meme de disciples.

LE CAPPADOCIEN. De quoi parle-t-il?

PREMIER SOLDAT. Nous ne savons jamais. Quelquefois il dit des choses epouvantables, mais il est impossible de le comprendre.

LE CAPPADOCIEN. Peut-on le voir?

PREMIER SOLDAT. Non. Le tetrarque ne le permet pas.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes:

too long to tell. I pass over all that, until they mounted next morning and went away. They rode until they saw the town where King Arthur had been staying for a fortnight or more. And there, too, was the damsel who had deprived her sister of her heritage, for she had kept close to the court, waiting for the arrival of her sister, who now draws near. But she does not worry much, for she does not think that her sister can find any knight who can withstand my lord Gawain's attack, and only one day of the forty yet remains. If this single day had passed, she would have had the reasonable and legal right to claim the heritage for herself alone. But more stands in the way than she thinks or believes.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf:

endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy--she did not like admiration--or suppose some latent desire to doff her royalty of form as if her beauty bored her and all that men say of beauty, and she wanted only to be like other people, insignificant. He did not know. He did not know. He must go to his work.)

Knitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head outlined absurdly by the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had tossed over the edge of the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece by Michael Angelo, Mrs Ramsay smoothed out what had been harsh in her manner a moment before, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead. "Let us find another picture to cut out," she said.

To the Lighthouse

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 The Young Forester by Zane Grey:

muddy, wide river! And I thought of the thousands of miles of country it drained, and of the forests there must be at its source. Then came the never-ending Kansas corn-fields. I do not know whether it was their length or their treeless monotony, but I grew tired looking at them.

From then on I began to take some notice of my fellow-travelers. The conductor proved to be an agreeable old fellow; and the train-boy, though I mistrusted his advances because he tried to sell me everything from chewing-gum to mining stock, turned out to be pretty good company. The Negro porter had such a jolly voice and laugh that I talked to him whenever I got the chance. Then occasional passengers occupied the seat opposite me from town to town. They were much alike, all sunburned and loud-voiced, and

The Young Forester