Today's Stichomancy for Peter Sellers

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

Of his gold city, and eternal day' - Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars I do possess what none can take away, My love and all the glory of the stars.

ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS' LOVE LETTERS

These are the letters which Endymion wrote To one he loved in secret, and apart. And now the brawlers of the auction mart Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note, Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote The merchant's price. I think they love not art

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling:

"raise his pigs before he tanned them."

Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question. How could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did in the West and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics of its oriental congener?" Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied that he was about to reopen the entire question. He was too far involved in the hideous tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote:--"Consult my first letter." Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact, Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage; having gone off on a side-issue on the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne:

seemed falsified; the planets had defied the laws of gravitation; the motions of the celestial spheres were erroneous as those of a watch with a defective mainspring, and there was reason to fear that the sun would never again shed his radiance upon the earth.

But these last fears were groundless. In three hours' time, without any intervening twilight, the morning sun made its appearance in the west, and day once more had dawned. On consulting his watch, Servadac found that night had lasted precisely six hours. Ben Zoof, who was unaccustomed to so brief a period of repose, was still slumbering soundly.

"Come, wake up!" said Servadac, shaking him by the shoulder;

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 Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

Line 415 aetherial] aethereal Line 428 ceu] uti -- Editor

NOTES

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: _From Ritual to Romance_ (Macmillan).<1> Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the diffi-culties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble.

The Waste Land