Today's Stichomancy for Francis Ford Coppola

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

"If you knew this why did you not come to me at the Emerald City and tender me your loyalty and obedience?" asked the Ruler of Oz.

"Well, I only learned the fact lately, and I've been too busy to leave home," he explained, looking at the floor instead of into Ozma's eyes. She knew he had spoken a falsehood, but only said:

"Why did you quarrel with the Skeezers?"

"It was this way," began the Su-dic, glad to change the subject. "We Flatheads love fish, and as we have no fish on this mountain we would sometimes go to the Lake

Glinda of Oz

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne:

worked himself into a fine breathing heat; in which, to a man of his temperament, action became needful.

'I do not know which is the worse,' he cried, 'the fraudulent old villain or the unmanly young cub. I will write to the Pall Mall and expose them. Nonsense, sir; they must be exposed! It's a public duty. Did you not tell me the fellow was a Tory? O, the uncle is a Radical lecturer, is he? No doubt the uncle has been grossly wronged. But of course, as you say, that makes a change; it becomes scarce so much a public duty.'

And he sought and instantly found a fresh outlet for his alacrity. Miss Hazeltine (he now perceived) must be kept out of

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

One little girl called another little girl with whom she was playing, ``Sister.''

Bessie Bell laughed at that.

``Oh, she is not a Sister!'' said Bessie Bell.

``Yes, she is; she is my sister!'' said the little girl.

``No,'' said Bessie Bell, just as great grown people said to her when she remembered strange things, ``No, there never was in the world a Sister like that!''

Then the smaller of the little girls who were playing together ran to the larger one, and caught hold of her hand, and they stood together in front of Bessie Bell--they both had long black curls,

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 Reef by Edith Wharton:

he was sure she thought a great deal of "measure", and approved of most things only up to a certain point. She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once young and old-fashioned. Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting, the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvet band on her tapering arm, made her resemble a "carte de visite" photograph of the middle sixties. One saw her, younger but no less invincibly lady-like, leaning on a chair with a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket on her tuckered bosom, toward the end of an embossed morocco album beginning with The Beauties of the Second Empire.