Today's Stichomancy for John Wilkes Booth

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

woman! the blond fur of her robe mingled well with the delicate tints of faint white which marked her flanks.

The profuse light cast down by the sun made this living gold, these russet markings, to burn in a way to give them an indefinable attraction.

The man and the panther looked at one another with a look full of meaning; the coquette quivered when she felt her friend stroke her head; her eyes flashed like lightning--then she shut them tightly.

"She has a soul," he said, looking at the stillness of this queen of the sands, golden like them, white like them, solitary and burning like them.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Koran:

of you; then unto your Lord shall ye be returned.'

And couldst thou see when the sinners hang down their heads before their Lord, 'O Lord! we have seen and we have heard; send us back then and we will do right. Verily, we are sure!'

Had we pleased we would have given to everything its guidance; but the sentence was due from me;-I will surely fill hell with the ginns and with men all together: 'So taste ye, for that ye forgat the meeting of this day of yours,-verily, we have forgotten you! and taste ye the torment of eternity for that which ye have done!'

They only believe in our signs who when they are reminded of them fall down adoring and celebrate the praises of their Lord, and are not

The Koran

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer:

And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream-- the scream of a woman in direst fear.

"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.

CHAPTER VIII

IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall. But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham prone by the French windows.

These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in the alcove which they formed. I bent over her. Nayland Smith was at my elbow.

"Get my bag" I said. "She has swooned. It is nothing serious."

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

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 First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells:

at least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of some metal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; and each contained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and misery that oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in dreams, at that time it seemed a small matter that at the end of the arms that lowered one towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and thumb, like the end of an elephant's trunk. The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture, and whitish brown in colour - rather like lumps of some cold souffle, and it smelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially divided carcass of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to believe it must have been

The First Men In The Moon