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 An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac:

out, won him that odious nickname throughout the neighborhood. It was this distress of mind, added to vague but constant fears for the future, which gave Marthe her thoughtful and subdued air. Nothing saddens so deeply as unmerited degradation from which there seems no escape. A painter could have made a fine picture of this family of pariahs in the bosom of their pretty nook in Champagne, where the landscape is generally sad.

"Francois!" called the bailiff, to hasten his son.

Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis:

She trifled with an amulet Imported from some Orient land. . . . "What fish can burst the Cosmic Net? . . . I HOPE," she sighed, "you'll Understand."

"Art, Science and Psychology, Causes that rise and shine and set,

Do all these never weary thee?" -- "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet . Would Thought and Life have ever met Unless" . . . She paused. Her lashes fanned

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

Harrow, not of the public elementary or private adventure school. They prove, as everything we know about Shakespear suggests, that he thought of the Shakespears and Ardens as families of consequence, and regarded himself as a gentleman under a cloud through his father's ill luck in business, and never for a moment as a man of the people. This is at once the explanation of and excuse for his snobbery. He was not a parvenu trying to cover his humble origin with a purchased coat of arms: he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up.

This Side Idolatry

There is another matter which I think Mr Harris should ponder. 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 The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis:

had built a great city just beyond their corn-fields. The silver men explained that smoke as "a dummy factory set up by Mark Hanna with Wall Street money to make a smoke and fool the people into thinking that it was a real factory and that industry was reviving under a Republican tariff." The orators said the best proof that it was a sham mill lay in the fact that the plutocrats claimed it was a tin mill, while "everybody knows it is impossible to manufacture tin plate in America."

My method of getting votes for the tariff was to take young Democrats from the mill and transport them to Democratic rallies in the far corner of the county where they heard their Democratic