Today's Stichomancy for Robert A. Heinlein

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac:

me. Courage is a garment to put on. I desire to go decently to death, therefore--"

A DOUBLE RETRIBUTION

"Oh, stop! stop!" cried the young lady who had asked for this history, interrupting the narrator suddenly. "Say no more; let me remain in uncertainty and believe that he was saved. If I hear now that he was shot I shall not sleep all night. To-morrow you shall tell me the rest."

We rose from table. My neighbor in accepting Monsieur Hermann's arm, said to him--

"I suppose he was shot, was he not?"

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

They obtained samples by driving to within 460 meters of ground zero in a tank specially fitted with rockets to which retrievable collectors were fastened in order to gather soil samples from a distance. This group made several sampling excursions on 16 and 17 July. The tank carried two personnel (a driver and a passenger) each trip. No member of this party received a radiation exposure of more than 1 roentgen (1).

Five other men from the earth-sampling group entered the ground zero area in a second tank, lined with lead for radiation protection. The tank, carrying the driver and one passenger, made five trips into the ground zero area to retrieve soil samples on 16 and 17 July. On two

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

shrapnel and of bomb.

Contrary to our expectations, we found little indication that lions in any great numbers laired in this part of ancient London. Well-worn pathways, molded by padded paws, led through the cavernous windows or doorways of a few of the ruins we passed, and once we saw the savage face of a great, black-maned lion scowling down upon us from a shattered stone balcony.

We followed down the bank of the Thames after we came upon it. I was anxious to look with my own eyes upon the famous bridge, and I guessed, too, that the river would lead me

Lost Continent

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 Lucile by Owen Meredith:

Placed our natures asunder; and we two again, As we then were, would still have been strangely at strife. In that self-independence which is to my life Its necessity now, as it once was its pride, Had our course through the world been henceforth side by side, I should have revolted forever, and shock'd Your respect for the world's plausibilities, mock'd, Without meaning to do so, and outraged, all those Social creeds which you live by. "Oh! do not suppose That I blame you. Perhaps it is you that are right.