Today's Stichomancy for Penelope Cruz

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

I noticed a large number of boat scenes and induced the child to construct some of them for me, which he was quite willing to do, explaining them as he went as readily as our children would explain Old Mother Hubbard or the Old Woman who Lived in her Shoe, by seeing the illustrations. Constructing one he repeated a verse somewhat like the following: Alone the fisherman sat, In his boat by the river's brink,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

And there my friend goes with it; but the wake That melts and ebbs between that friend and me Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.

Two Quatrains

Unity

As eons of incalculable strife Are in the vision of one moment caught,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells:

another quarter.) It is a book that has been enormously advertised; it has been almost impossible to escape its column- long advertisements; it is billed upon the hoardings, and it is on the whole a very able and right-spirited book. It calls for more and better education, for more scientific methods, for less class suspicion and more social explicitness and understanding, for a franker and fairer treatment of labour. But why does it call for these things? Does it call for them because they are right? Because in accomplishing them one serves God?

Not at all. But because otherwise this strange sprawling empire of ours will drop back into a secondary place in the world.

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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

"It will be a month before they'll have sense enough to crawl out," he remarked to Joseph, "and they're wedged in between some old planks in very uncomfortable fashion. They look like fine little fellows too. I think we ought to manage in some way to get them out."

"And it would be bad if any of them died there," said Joseph,rubbing his head and still ruminating on the subject; "very bad. Well, we'll have to see what we` can do about it."

"Will you see right away?" urged Tattine eagerly.

"May as well, I reckon," and Joseph walked off in the direction of the tool-house, but to Tattine's regret evidently did not appreciate any need for extreme haste.