Today's Stichomancy for Josh Hartnett

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by

Mosses From An Old Manse

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells:

more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

`But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate

The Time Machine

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker:

Caswall, seeming to drive him backward more and more by each movement, till at last he seemed to be actually hurled through the door which Mimi's entrance had left open, and fell at full length on the gravel path without.

Then came the final and complete collapse of Lilla, who, without a sound, sank down on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVI--FACE TO FACE

Mimi was greatly distressed when she saw her cousin lying prone. She had a few times in her life seen Lilla on the verge of fainting, but never senseless; and now she was frightened. She threw herself on her knees beside Lilla, and tried, by rubbing her hands and other

Lair of the White Worm

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 Underdogs by Mariano Azuela:

Luis Cervantes was forced to answer that his sole nour- ishment was whatever the old ranch women happened to give him and that everyone still considered him an in- truder.

"Look here, Tenderfoot, they're all good boys, really," Demetrio answered. "You've got to know how to handle them, that's all. You mark my words; from tomorrow on, there won't be a thing you'll lack."

In effect, things began to change that very afternoon. Some of Demetrio's men lay in the quarry, glancing at the sunset that turned the clouds into huge clots of

The Underdogs