Today's Stichomancy for John Wayne

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon:

up trophies worthy of the name, seeing that he left behind him imperishable monuments of prowess, and bore away on his own body indelible marks of the fury with which he fought;[1] so that, apart from hearsay, by the evidence of men's eyes his valour stood approved.

[1] Or, "visible signs of the spirit," etc. See Plut. "Ages." xxxvi.

And amongst these we must not deem them trophies alone which he actually set up, but reckon the many campaigns which he undertook, since they were victories truly, even when the enemy refused to encounter him, victories devoid of danger, yet fraught with even more solid advantage to the state of Sparta and her fellow-combatants; just as in our games we crown as victor him who walks over the field[2] no

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther:

66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men.

67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are known to be truly such, in so far as they promote gain.

68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence.

70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men preach their own

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

immediately aggravated, and so on the first day of their tragic adventure real suffering commenced in grim earnest, and the full horrors of shipwreck were upon them.

As the days passed conditions became horrible. Aching eyes scanned the horizon day and night until the weak and weary watchers would sink exhausted to the bottom of the boat, and there wrest in dream-disturbed slumber a moment's respite from the horrors of the waking reality.

The sailors, goaded by the remorseless pangs of hunger, had eaten their leather belts, their shoes, the sweatbands from their caps, although both Clayton and Monsieur

The Return of Tarzan

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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson:

heroic order. "Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions - such I call good books." He did not think them easy to be read. "The heroic books," he says, "even if printed in the character of our mother-tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valour and generosity we have." Nor does he