Today's Stichomancy for Simon Cowell

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

there." "Ah, now. If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face. Lord, no: not I -- heh-heh-heh! Such a shy man as I be!" "Yes -- she's very vain. 'Tis said that every night at going to bed she looks in the glass to put on her night- cap properly." "And not a married woman. Oh, the world!" "And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said. Can play so clever that 'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for."

Far From the Madding Crowd

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving:

softness, and endeavored to coax him into a dressing-gown and slippers, and other gentlemanly habits. Do what they might, there was no keeping down the butcher. His sturdy nature would break through all their glozings. He had a hearty vulgar good-humor that was irrepressible. His very jokes made his sensitive daughters shudder; and he persisted in wearing his blue cotton coat of a morning, dining at two o'clock, and having a "bit of sausage with his tea."

He was doomed, however, to share the unpopularity of his family. He found his old comrades gradually growing cold and civil to him; no longer laughing at his jokes; and now and then

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon:

greater number wish to be governed.'' As Emperor he often managed to govern them according to his own ideal.

We have travelled a long way since the time when historians, in their singular blindness, and great poets, who possessed more talent than psychology, would hold forth in indignant accents against the coup d'etat of Brumaire. What profound illusions underlay the assertion that ``France lay fair in Messidor's great sun''! And other illusions no less profound underlay such verdicts as that of Victor Hugo concerning this period. We have seen that the ``Crime of Brumaire'' had as an enthusiastic accomplice, not only the Government itself but the

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 Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon:

less than having all the princes and kings of Europe brought to its feet loaded with chains, was made prisoner in its own sanctuary by a handful of mercenaries.''

2. The Government of France during the Convention--The Terror.

As soon as it assembled in 1792 the Convention began by decreeing the abolition of royalty, and in spite of the hesitation of a great number of its members, who knew that the provinces were royalist, it proclaimed the Republic.

Intimately persuaded that such a proclamation would transform the civilised world, it instituted a new era and a new calendar. The year I. of this era marked the dawn of a world in which reason