Today's Stichomancy for W. C. Fields

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon:

last century in France.

One of the psychological causes of this intense thirst for reforms arises from the difficulty of determining the real causes of the evils complained of. The need of explanation creates fictitious causes of the simplest nature. Therefore the remedies also appear simple.

For forty years we have incessantly been passing reforms, each of which is a little revolution in itself. In spite of all these, or rather because of them, the French have evolved almost as little as any race in Europe.

The slowness of our actual evolution may be seen if we compare

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

from England; it will take a few weeks to get there."

In this way, madame, he enticed our poor friend to England, where, as you will already have supposed, he has placed him in charge of Doctor Ellis, who, they say, has not his equal in Europe for the treatment of this particular form of mental aberration.

I joined them at Beauvais, and have followed them to Hanwell, taking care not to be seen by Marie-Gaston. Here I shall be detained until the doctor is able to give a decided opinion as to the probable results of our friend's condition. I greatly fear, however, that I cannot possibly return to Paris in time for the opening of the session. But I shall write to the president of the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde:

Galilean peasants, like the Irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary language of intercourse all over Palestine, as indeed all over the Eastern world. I never liked the idea that we knew of Christ's own words only through a translation of a translation. It is a delight to me to think that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato understood him: that he really said [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], that when he thought of the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and that his last word when he

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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson:

horrible to man, and bare sage-brush country that seemed little kindlier, and came by supper-time to Elko. As we were standing, after our manner, outside the station, I saw two men whip suddenly from underneath the cars, and take to their heels across country. They were tramps, it appeared, who had been riding on the beams since eleven of the night before; and several of my fellow- passengers had already seen and conversed with them while we broke our fast at Toano. These land stowaways play a great part over here in America, and I should have liked dearly to become acquainted with them.

At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. I was coming out from