Today's Stichomancy for Nicholas Copernicus

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft:

It was on Monday, June 3rd, that we saw the first of the half-buried blocks. I cannot describe the emotions with which I actually touched - in objective reality - a fragment of Cyclopean masonry in every respect like the blocks in the walls of my dream-buildings. There was a distinct trace of carving - and my hands trembled as I recognised part of a curvilinear decorative scheme made hellish to me through years of tormenting nightmare and baffling research. A month of digging brought a total of some 1250 blocks in varying stages of wear and disintegration. Most of these were carven megaliths with curved tops and bottoms. A minority were smaller, flatter,

Shadow out of Time

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain:

"No--kept it to destroy us with. Mary, he has exposed us to some already. I know it--I know it well. I saw it in a dozen faces after church. Ah, he wouldn't answer our nod of recognition--he knew what he had been doing!"

In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the morning that the old couple were rather seriously ill--prostrated by the exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall, the congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was sincerely distressed; for these old people were about all it had left to be proud of, now.

Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious,

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

The play is failing.

The way I discovered it was this. Yesterday, being short of money, I sold my amethist pin to Jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars, throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as I had a special purpose for useing funds. Had father been at home I could have touched him, but mother is diferent.

I then went out to buy a frame for his picture, which I had repaired by drawing in the other eye, although licking the Fire and passionate look of the originle. At the shop I was compeled to show it, to buy a frame to fit. The clerk was almost overpowered.

"Do you know him?" she asked, in a low and throbing tone.

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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells:

lower valleys. Kurt went with three men into the still intact gas-chambers, let out a certain quantity of gas from them, and prepared a series of ripping panels for the descent. Also the residue of the bombs and explosives in the magazine were thrown overboard and fell, detonating loudly, in the wilderness below. And about four o'clock in the afternoon upon a wide and rocky plain within sight of snow-crested cliffs, the Vaterland ripped and grounded.

It was necessarily a difficult and violent affair, for the Vaterland had not been planned for the necessities of a balloon. The captain got one panel ripped too soon and the others not soon