Today's Stichomancy for Clyde Barrow

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne:

and the knights of Rhodes, should still be undestroyed.

But Malta, too, was gone; and when, upon the 14th, the sounding-line was dropped upon its site, it was only with the same result so oftentimes obtained before.

"The devastation is not limited to Africa," observed the count.

"Assuredly not," assented the lieutenant; adding, "and I confess I am almost in despair whether we shall ever ascertain its limits. To what quarter of Europe, if Europe still exists, do you propose that I should now direct your course?"

"To Sicily, Italy, France!" ejaculated Servadac, eagerly,--"anywhere where we can learn the truth of what has befallen us."

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac:

experience many times without dishonour, for it is so natural to spring towards happiness; but there is only one love in a lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two questions--"Is it passion? Is it love?" So, since love comes into existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of passion as yet; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is meant by that word PASSION--she suffered. Through all the trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:

With the gray Lake gulls behind -- To the weight of a half-year's winter And the warm wet western wind! To the home of the floods and thunder, To her pale dry healing blue -- To the lift of the great Cape combers, And the smell of the baked Karroo. To the growl of the sluicing stamp-head -- To the reef and the water-gold, To the last and the largest Empire,

Verses 1889-1896

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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley:

drowning man is not to strike out for his life lest by keeping his head above water he interfere with the laws of gravitation. Not that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered the head of a dehumanised pedant--namely, that once famous "Preventive Check," which, if a nation did ever apply it--as it never will-- could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural