Today's Stichomancy for Orson Welles

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne:

other to us from the moment we know that they equally lead us into infinite space?"

Barbicane and Nicholl could not forbear smiling. They had just been creating "art for art's sake." Never had so idle a question been raised at such an inopportune moment. The sinister truth remained that, whether hyperbolically or parabolically borne away, the projectile would never again meet either the earth or the moon.

What would become of these bold travelers in the immediate future? If they did not die of hunger, if they did not die of thirst, in some days, when the gas failed, they would die from want of air, unless the cold had killed them first. Still, important as it was

From the Earth to the Moon

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And Rua stood on the hill, and sighed, and followed her flight, And there were the lodges below, each with its door alight; From folk that sat on the terrace and drew out the even long Sudden crowings of laughter, monotonous drone of song; The quiet passage of souls over his head in the trees; (7) And from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas. "Farewell, my home," said Rua. "Farewell, O quiet seat! To-morrow in all your valleys the drum of death shall beat."

III. THE FEAST

DAWN as yellow as sulphur leaped on the naked peak, And all the village was stirring, for now was the priest to speak.

Ballads

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James:

triumph, but she remained to talk something in the nature of sense! She put herself completely in my hands--she does me the honour to intimate that of all her friends I'm the most disinterested. After she had announced to me that Lord Iffield was utterly committed to her and that for the present I was absolutely the only person in the secret, she arrived at her real business. She had had a suspicion of me ever since that day at Folkestone when I asked her for the truth about her eyes. The truth is what you and I both guessed. She's in very bad danger."

"But from what cause? I, who by God's mercy have kept mine, know everything that can be known about eyes," said Mrs. Meldrum.

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 Protagoras by Plato:

expressions. Such were Thales of Miletus, and Pittacus of Mitylene, and Bias of Priene, and our own Solon, and Cleobulus the Lindian, and Myson the Chenian; and seventh in the catalogue of wise men was the Lacedaemonian Chilo. All these were lovers and emulators and disciples of the culture of the Lacedaemonians, and any one may perceive that their wisdom was of this character; consisting of short memorable sentences, which they severally uttered. And they met together and dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, as the first-fruits of their wisdom, the far-famed inscriptions, which are in all men's mouths--'Know thyself,' and 'Nothing too much.'

Why do I say all this? I am explaining that this Lacedaemonian brevity was the style of primitive philosophy. Now there was a saying of Pittacus