Today's Stichomancy for Emiliano Zapata

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon:

Tegea. The next day Agesilaus shifted his position, encamping about two miles'[17] distance from Mantinea; and the Arcadians, issuing from Tegea and clinging to the mountains between Mantinea and that city, appeared with large bodies of heavy infantry, wishing to effect a junction with the Mantineans. The Argives, it is true, supported them, but they were not in full force. And here counsellors were to be found who urged on Agesilaus to attack these troops separately; but fearing lest, in proportion as he pressed on to engage them, the Mantineans might issue from the city behind and attack him on flank and rear, he decided it was best to let the two bodies coalesce, and then, if they would accept battle, to engage them on an open and fair field.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft:

captured members, absolutely nothing was to be discovered; hence the anxiety of the police for any antiquarian lore which might help them to place the frightful symbol, and through it track down the cult to its fountain-head. Inspector Legrasse was scarcely prepared for the sensation which his offering created. One sight of the thing had been enough to throw the assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they lost no time in crowding around him to gaze at the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas. No recognised school of sculpture had animated

Call of Cthulhu

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

I hear that darling, darling voice again. The air is warm, and teems with fragrance clear, Sings she perchance for me alone to hear?

I haste, and trample down the shrubs amain; The trees make way, the bushes all retreat, And so--the beast is lying at her feet.

She looks at him: "The monster's droll enough!

He's, for a bear, too mild,

Yet, for a dog, too wild, So shaggy, clumsy, rough!" Upon his back she gently strokes her foot;

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 What is Man? by Mark Twain:

had come to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as FACT, but only as legend-- dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering either as history or fiction.

Has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless., utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don't believe it has happened in any case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his case if he had

What is Man?