Today's Stichomancy for Chow Yun Fat

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde:

[Goes back to throne.]

MORANZONE

Now hast thou got thy enemy in thy hand.

LORD JUSTICE

[taking the time-glass up] Guido Ferranti, while the crumbling sand Falls through this time-glass, thou hast leave to speak. This and no more.

GUIDO

It is enough, my lord.

LORD JUSTICE

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett:

such cheerful directness if we were trespassing that, after a few words, she went back to her kitchen and reappeared with a plateful of doughnuts.

"Entertainment for man and beast," announced Mrs. Todd with satisfaction. "Why, we've perceived there was new doughnuts all along the road, but you're the first that has treated us."

Our new acquaintance flushed with pleasure, but said nothing.

"They're very nice; you've had good luck with 'em," pronounced Mrs. Todd. "Yes, we've observed there was doughnuts all the way along; if one house is frying all the rest is; 'tis so with a great many things."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato:

offenders which are imposed by the law of the land, of all men at all times of life, which are attached by the laws of nature to the performance of certain actions. All these punishments are really educational; that is to say, they are not intended to retaliate on the offender, but to teach him a lesson. Also there is an element of chance in them, which is another name for our ignorance of the laws of nature. There is evil too inseparable from good (compare Lysis); not always punished here, as good is not always rewarded. It is capable of being indefinitely diminished; and as knowledge increases, the element of chance may more and more disappear.

For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we are

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 New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

So good men lengthen life; and to recall The past is to have twice enjoyed it all.

AD MAGISTRUM LUDI (UNFINISHED DRAFT.)

NOW in the sky And on the hearth of Now in a drawer the direful cane, That sceptre of the . . . reign, And the long hawser, that on the back Of Marsyas fell with many a whack, Twice hardened out of Scythian hides,