Today's Stichomancy for Penelope Cruz

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert:

discovered his numerous embezzlements; sales of wood which had been concealed from her, false receipts, etc. Furthermore, he had an illegitimate child, and entertained a friendship for "a person in Dozule."

These base actions affected her very much. In March, 1853, she developed a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were coated with smoke, and the leeches they applied did not relieve her oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being just seventy-two years old.

People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which she wore in bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends regretted her

A Simple Soul

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber:

the cakes reposed.

"How does one eat them?" I inquired.

"Yuh don't really eat 'em. The motion is more like inhalin'. T' eat 'em successful you really ought t' get into a bath-tub half-filled with water, because as soon's you bite in at one end w'y the custard stuff slides out at the other, an' no human mouth c'n be two places at oncet. Shut your eyes girl, an' just wade in."

I waded. In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy filling around a corner with my

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells:

could cover great spaces of canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put the things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. We haven't any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."

"But what did you think I meant?"

She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And here," and she indicated her eyelid.

Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a

When the Sleeper Wakes

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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville:

in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.

Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance--the spinal cord--as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain. And what is still more, for

Moby Dick