Today's Stichomancy for Ron Howard

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates:

-comparatively little known, too, and far enough from London to escape most tourists. The inn itself had sheltered Cromwell, and before his time better men than he had warmed themselves at the great hearth round which we sat. For all that, he had given his name to the panelled room. Our bedrooms were as old, low-pitched and full of beams. The stairs also were a great glory. In fact, the house was in its way unique. A discreet decorator, too, had made it comfortable. Save in the Cromwell room, electric light was everywhere. And in the morning chambermaids led you by crooked passages over uneven doors to white bathrooms. It was all right.

The Brother of Daphne

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy:

till just after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down the path with the young man.

Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it in the mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business, the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have nothing more pressing to do?"

The Woodlanders

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare:

From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather'd king: Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-defying swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,

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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy:

to you!"

"Oh, it is of no consequence!" said Jude distantly.

"I thought, of course, that she had never been really your wife since she left you of her own accord years and years ago! My sense of it was, that a parting such as yours from her, and mine from him, ended the marriage."

"I can't say more without speaking against her, and I don't want to do that," said he. "Yet I must tell you one thing, which would settle the matter in any case. She has married another man--really married him! I knew nothing about it till after the visit we made here."

"Married another? ... It is a crime--as the world treats it,

Jude the Obscure