Today's Stichomancy for Nicolas Cage

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells:

"It is a man," gabbled my conductor, "a man, a man, a five-man, like me."

"Shut up!" said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.

I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.

"It is a man," the voice repeated. "He comes to live with us?"

It was a thick voice, with something in it--a kind of whistling overtone-- that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was strangely good.

The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived the pause was interrogative. "He comes to live with you," I said.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

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

plucking garrisons from fortresses and sailors from ships, jumbling them up in their wrong boxes, clumsily so that their rifles and swords were broken, sweeping the splendid curves of the Imperial Road into heaps of ruins, casting the jungle growth of Zululand into the fire.

Well, Master Dick," the voice of this cosmic calamity would say, "you ought to have put them away last night. No! I can't wait until you've sailed them all away in ships. I got my work to do, and do it I will."

And in no time all my continents and lands were swirling water and swiping strokes of house-flannel.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley:

learned and curious Appendix, in the "Montpellier Medical" for 1866.

{8} This lecture was given at Cambridge in 1869.

{9} This lecture was given at Cambridge in 1869.

{10} I owe this account of Bloet's--which appears to me the only one trustworthy--to the courtesy and erudition of Professor Henry Morley, who finds it quoted from Bloet's "Acroama," in the "Observationum Medicarum Rariorum," lib. vii., of John Theodore Schenk. Those who wish to know several curious passages of Vesalius's life, which I have not inserted in this article, would do well to consult one by Professor Morley, "Anatomy in Long Clothes," in "Fraser's Magazine" for November, 1853. May I express a hope,

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 Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll:

Would have caused quite a thrill in Society),

"As to temper the Jubjub's a desperate bird, Since it lives in perpetual passion: Its taste in costume is entirely absurd-- It is ages ahead of the fashion:

"But it knows any friend it has met once before: It never will look at a bride: And in charity-meetings it stands at the door, And collects--though it does not subscribe.

" Its flavor when cooked is more exquisite far Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs:

The Hunting of the Snark