Today's Stichomancy for Pierce Brosnan
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: the night I first saw her at the inn, and which, it will
be remembered, I picked up. Since that night I had not
seen it, and had as good as forgotten it. Now, as I
folded up my other doublet, the one I had then been
wearing, it dropped from my pocket.
The sight of it recalled all--that night, and
Mademoiselle's face in the lantern light, and my fine
plans, and the end of them; and, in a fit of childish
fury, the outcome of long suppressed passion, I snatched
up the sachet from the floor and tore it across and
across, and flung the pieces down. As they fell, a
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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: journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady low whirring of
the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in the darkness while the
thought came to her that she and all her fellow passengers were really at
the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and did he stand at his throttle
keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives intrusted to him? Such thoughts
vaguely annoyed Carley, and she dismissed them.
A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second
part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the California
Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her. The glare
of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on her pillows, she
looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures, dotted now and
 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 The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: I not a true prophet?" Stanton was silent. "Is not your situation
very miserable?"--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to
believe this an illusion of madness. He thought to himself, "How
could he have gained entrance here?"--"Would you not wish to be
delivered from it?" Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling
seemed to answer the question. "I have the power to deliver you
from it." Melmoth spoke very slowly and very softly, and the
melodious smoothness of his voice made a frightful contrast to the
stony rigor of his features, and the fiendlike brilliancy of his
eyes. "Who are you, and whence come you?" said Stanton, in a tone
that was meant to be interrogatory and imperative, but which, from
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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 Baltimore by Owen Wister: but it was equally miraculous in its total void of all expression
relating to this moment, or to any moment; just her beauty, her permanent
stationary beauty, was there glowing in it and through it, not skin deep,
but going back and back into her lazy eyes, and shining from within the
modulated bloom of her color and the depths of her amber hair. She was
choosing, for this occasion, to be as impersonal as some radiant hour in
nature, some mellow, motionless day when the leaves have turned, but have
not fallen, and it is drowsily warm; but it wasn't so much of nature that
she, in her harmonious lustre, reminded me, as of some beautiful
silken-shaded lamp, from which color rather than light came with subdued
ampleness.
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