Today's Stichomancy for Sergio Leone

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather:

and was sorry when Antonia sent Mary away, mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out from Tony's room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the feathers, but otherwise calm. She begged Antonia and me to go with her, and help get her cattle together; they were scattered and might be gorging themselves in somebody's cornfield.

`Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyes at married men,' Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly.

Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. `I never made anything to him with my eyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. It ain't my prairie.'

My Antonia

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

negotiate with Latournelle."

"He's of legal age, twenty-five and a half years. As for me, it will be paying a debt, my boy, to make the purchase easy for you," said the notary.

Butscha was kissing Madame Mignon's hand, and his face was wet with tears as Modeste opened the door of the salon.

"What are you doing to my Black Dwarf?" she demanded. "Who is making him unhappy?"

"Ah! Mademoiselle Mignon, do we luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune, ever weep for grief? They have just shown me as much affection as I could feel for them if they were indeed my own

Modeste Mignon

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

Rapt, from his lonely sod Looks up and is thrilled and startled With a fleeting sense of God!

THE SEEKER

THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old gods fail him in the strife-- Withdrawn, the heavens he sought!

Vanished, the miracles that led, The cloud at noon, the flame at night; The vision that he wing'd and sped

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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac:

courtesy and loving-kindness; their marriage was the harmony of two souls indissolubly united. Two eiders winging the same flight, the sound in the echo, the thought in the word,--these, perhaps, are true images of their union. Every one here in Jarvis loved them with an affection which I can compare only to the love of a plant for the sun. The wife was simple in her manners, beautiful in form, lovely in face, with a dignity of bearing like that of august personages. In 1783, being then twenty-six years old, she conceived a child; her pregnancy was to the pair a solemn joy. They prepared to bid the earth farewell; for they told me they should be transformed when their child had passed the state of infancy which needed their fostering care until

Seraphita