Today's Stichomancy for Nicolas Cage

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

But mealy-mouthed propriety, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical ways of a married woman who never allows anything to be seen but the vulgar needs of the household, and affects to refuse every kind of extravagance, leads to silent ruin, dumb disaster, which is all the more startling because, though condoned, it remains unaccounted for. It is the ignoble bill of daily expenses and not gay dissipation that devours the largest fortune. The father of a family ruins himself ingloriously, and the great consolation of gratified vanity is wanting in his misery.

This little sermon will go like a javelin to the heart of many a home. Madame Marneffes are to be seen in every sphere of social life, even

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey:

memorable on that score alone. She ate until she was actually ashamed of herself. She laughed heartily, she talked, she made love to Glenn. Then suddenly an idea flashed into her quick mind.

"Glenn, did this girl Flo teach you to cook?" she queried, sharply.

"No. I always was handy in camp. Then out here I had the luck to fall in with an old fellow who was a wonderful cook. He lived with me for a while. . . . Why, what difference would it have made--had Flo taught me?"

Carley felt the heat of blood in her face. "I don't know that it would have made a difference. Only--I'm glad she didn't teach you. I'd rather no girl could teach you what I couldn't."

"You think I'm a pretty good cook, then?" he asked.

The Call of the Canyon

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau:

great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:

"I am too high born to be propertied, To be a second at control, Or useful serving-man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world."

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow men appears

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke:

tradition points out the very room in which he began to paint. I am not one of those who would inquire too closely into such a legend as this. The cottage may have been rebuilt a dozen times since Titian's day; not a scrap of the original stone or plaster may remain; but beyond a doubt the view that we saw from the window is the same that Titian saw. Now, for the first time, I could understand and appreciate the landscape-backgrounds of his pictures. The compact masses of mountains, the bold, sharp forms, the hanging rocks of cold gray emerging from green slopes, the intense blue aerial distances--these all had seemed to be unreal and imaginary--compositions of the studio. But now I knew that,