Today's Stichomancy for J. Edgar Hoover

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau:

almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a

Walking

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

XIX System

Every night my prayers I say, And get my dinner every day; And every day that I've been good, I get an orange after food.

A Child's Garden of Verses

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman:

Well--that original bunch of girls set to work to clean up the place and make their living as best they could. Some of the remaining slave women rendered invaluable service, teaching such trades as they knew. They had such records as were then kept, all the tools and implements of the time, and a most fertile land to work in.

There were a handful of the younger matrons who had escaped slaughter, and a few babies were born after the cataclysm --but only two boys, and they both died.

For five or ten years they worked together, growing stronger and wiser and more and more mutually attached, and then the

Herland

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 Koran:

Lord of grievous torment!'

And had we made it a foreign Koran, they would have said, 'Unless its signs be detailed.... What! foreign and Arabic?' Say, 'It is, for those who believe, a guidance and a healing. But those who believe not, in their ears is dulness, and it is blindness to them; these are called to from a far-off place.'

And we gave Moses the Book, and it was disputed about; but had it not been for thy Lord's word already passed it would have been decided between them, for, verily, they were in hesitating doubt thereon.

Whoso does right it is for his soul, and whoso does evil it is against it, for thy Lord is not unjust towards His servants.

The Koran