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 The Sportsman by Xenophon:

The ordinary small nets should be made of fine Phasian or Carthaginian[3] flax, and so too should the road nets and the larger hayes.[4] These small nets should be nine-threaded [made of three strandes, and each strand of three threads],[5] five spans[6] in depth,[7] and two palms[8] at the nooses or pockets.[9] There should be no knots in the cords that run round, which should be so inserted as to run quite smoothly.[10] The road net should be twelve-threaded, and the larger net (or haye) sixteen. They may be of different sizes, the former varying from twelve to twenty-four or thirty feet, the latter from sixty to one hundred and twenty or one hundred and eighty feet.[11] If larger they will be unwieldy and hard to manage. Both

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling:

pressing better men than themselves to fight for 'em. The press- gangs are out already on our side. You look out for yours. "

'"I'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after I've run this cargo; but I do wish" - Dad says, going over the lugger's side with our New Year presents under his arm and young L'Estrange holding the lantern - "I just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to run one cargo a month all this winter. It 'ud show 'em what honest work means."

'"Well, I've warned ye," says Uncle Aurette. "I'll be slipping off now before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my love to Sister and take care o' the kegs. It's thicking to southward."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac:

height to which he had really risen; far worse, he is no longer on the level of scientific knowledge; science has progressed, he has stayed where he was. The man who came forth ready for life at twenty-two years of age, with every sign of superiority, has nothing left to-day but the reputation of it. In the beginning, with his mind specially turned to the exact sciences and mathematics by his education, he neglected everything that was not his specialty; and you can hardly imagine his present dulness in all other branches of human knowledge. I hardly dare confide even to you the secrets of his incapacity sheltered by the fact that he was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. With that label attached

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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke:

itself glitters into sight. The snow grows softer as we toil up the steep, narrow comb between the Gross-Venediger and his neighbour the Klein-Venediger. At last we have reached our journey's end. See, the whole of the Tyrol is spread out before us in wondrous splendour, as we stand on this snowy ridge; and at our feet the Schlatten glacier, like a long, white snake, curls down into the valley.

There is still a little peak above us; an overhanging horn of snow which the wind has built against the mountain-top. I would like to stand there, just for a moment. The guide protests it would be dangerous, for if the snow should break it would be a fall of a