Today's Stichomancy for Wes Craven

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells:

some attractive casualty in his wife's discourse. "People have always looked up to the house and considering all things, old Mr. Durgan really was extraordinarily good--extraordinarily good. You intend to give us a good deal of your time here, I hope."

"I mean to do my duty by the Parish," said my uncle.

"I'm sincerely glad to hear it--sincerely. We've missed--the house influence. An English village isn't complete--People get out of hand. Life grows dull. The young people drift away to London."

He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment.

"We shall look to you to liven things up," he said, poor man!

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:

boots. She threw one down on the ground, thrust her hand into the other, and stared at it, sucking in her cheeks. Suddenly she bent forward, spat on the toecap, and started polishing with a brush rooted out of her apron pocket..."Slut of a girl! Heaven knows what infectious disease may be breeding now in that boot. Anna must get rid of that girl--even if she has to do without one for a bit--as soon as she's up and about again. The way she chucked one boot down and then spat upon the other! She didn't care whose boots she'd got hold of. SHE had no false notions of the respect due to the master of the house." He turned away from the window and switched his bath towel from the washstand rail, sick at heart. "I'm too sensitive for a man--that's what's the matter with me. Have been from the beginning,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett:

repairing lobster pots; the very boats seemed to be taking an afternoon nap in the sun. I could hardly discover a distant sail as I looked seaward, except a weather-beaten lobster smack, which seemed to have been taken for a plaything by the light airs that blew about the bay. It drifted and turned about so aimlessly in the wide reach off Burnt Island, that I suspected there was nobody at the wheel, or that she might have parted her rusty anchor chain while all the crew were asleep.

I watched her for a minute or two; she was the old Miranda, owned by some of the Caplins, and I knew her by an odd shaped patch of newish duck that was set into the peak of her dingy

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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase--suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most