Today's Stichomancy for Gary Cooper

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes:

shame to you more than to any one else if this knight should take your niece away with him in such sad array." And the Count made answer: "Gentle niece, do you give her the best of your dresses." But Erec heard the conversation, and said: "By no means, my lord. For be assured that nothing in the world would tempt me to let her have another robe until the Queen shall herself bestow it upon her." When the damsel heard this, she replied: "Alas! fair sire, since you insist upon leading off my cousin thus dressed in a white shift and chemise, and since you are determined that she shall have none of my dresses, a different gift I wish to make her. I have three good palfreys, as good as any of king or

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Koran:

Is it that they did not ponder over the words, whether that has come to them which came not to their fathers of yore? Or did they not know their apostle, that they thus deny him? Or do they say, 'He is possessed by a ginn?' Nay, he came to them with the truth, and most of them are averse from the truth.

But if the truth were to follow their lusts, the heavens and the earth would be corrupted with all who in them are!-Nay, we brought them their reminder, but they from their reminder turn aside.

Or dost thou ask them for a tribute? but the tribute of thy Lord is better, for He is the best of those who provide.

And, verily, thou dost call them to a right way; but, verily,

The Koran

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And marching in so grand a way, You never saw the like by day.

So fine a show was never seen At the great circus on the green; For every kind of beast and man Is marching in that caravan.

As first they move a little slow, But still the faster on they go, And still beside me close I keep Until we reach the town of Sleep.

A Child's Garden of Verses

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 Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac:

Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a fall, with or without a crash?

I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge, one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights, and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms-- furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more than was here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a looking- glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the student opens his window.