Today's Stichomancy for Sean Connery

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie:

Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist.

I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which led to my being connected with the affair.

I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac:

honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface myself in these poor people's merry-making.

The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps with tin reflectors. A row of wooden benches ran round the walls,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

speaking as loudly as usual. "What right have you to order me around? If I want to talk, or yell, or whistle--"

Before she could say anything more an unseen hand seized her firmly and threw her out of the door, which closed behind her with a sharp slam. She found herself bumping and rolling in the road and when she got up and tried to open the door of the house again she found it locked.

"What has happened to Scraps?" asked Ojo.

"Never mind. Let's go to sleep, or something

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

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 Sportsman by Xenophon:

"de Div." i. 40. See Aesch. "Sept. c. Th." 392; Eur. "Phoen." 1122 foll.; Apollod. iii. 6; Strab. ix. 399, 404.

[14] Lit. "to be honoured ever living."

Peleus kindled in the gods desire to give him Thetis, and to hymn their nuptials at the board of Cheiron.[15]

[15] For the marriage of Peleus and Thetis see Hom. "Il." xxiv. 61; cf. Pope's rendering:

To grace those nuptials from the bright abode Yourselves were present; when this minstrel god (Well pleased to share the feast) amid the quire Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre