Today's Stichomancy for Jack Kevorkian

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri:

there was need of sundry ``truces'' and ``peaces,'' notwithstanding the harsh penalties of previous centuries. And Du Boys called Cettes simple because, after giving a table of shocking punishments in the Germany of his day (the fifteenth century), he marvelled that all these pains and torments had not prevented the increase of crimes.

Imperial Rome deluded herself with the idea that she could stamp out Christianity with punishments and tortures, which, however, only seemed to fan the flame. In the same way Catholic Europe hoped to extinguish Protestantism by means of vindictive persecution, and only produced the opposite effect, as always

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley:

low profligacy; but of that I do not speak here. I mean that in the same man the good and evil of a city life meet. And in this way.

In a countryman like me, coming up out of wild and silent moorlands into a great city, the first effect of the change is increased intellectual activity. The perpetual stream of human faces, the innumerable objects of interest in every shop-window, are enough to excite the mind to action, which is increased by the simple fact of speaking to fifty different human beings in the day instead of five. Now in the city-bred youth this excited state of mind is chronic, permanent. It is denoted plainly enough by the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare:

[Enter Mistress Banister.]

What gentlewoman is this that grieves so much? It seems she doth address her self to me.

MISTRESS BANISTER. God save you, sir, sir; pray, is your name master Cromwell?

CROMWELL. My name is Thomas Cromwell, gentlewoman.

MISTRESS BANISTER. Know you not one Bagot, sir, that's come to Antwerp?

CROMWELL. No, trust me, I never saw the man,

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 Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare:

KATHERINA. Would Katherine had never seen him though!

[Exit, weeping, followed by BIANCA and others.]

BAPTISTA. Go, girl, I cannot blame thee now to weep, For such an injury would vex a very saint; Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.

[Enter BIONDELLO.]

Master, master! News! old news, and such news as you never heard of!

BAPTISTA.

The Taming of the Shrew