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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James:

"Oh," she said quietly, "there ARE refinements."

The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. "YOU have them!"

"As one of the signs," she continued in the same tone, "they constitute perhaps the worst."

He thought it over and his gravity returned. "Is it a refinement not to answer his mother's letters?"

She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. "Oh I should say the greatest of all."

"Well," said Strether, "I'M quite content to let it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson:

is gone.

III. Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock; Never a man could fling him: for Willy stood like a rock. `Here's a leg for a babe of a week!' says doctor; and he would be bound, There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.

IV.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne:

with myself, That one and twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights: - I'll look into them: so, giving up the argument, - I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches, - "the coat I have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, "will do;" - took a place in the Dover stage; and the packet sailing at nine the next morning, - by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestably in France, that had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the DROITS D'AUBAINE; - my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, - portmanteau and all,

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 A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving:

his embarrassments Castaing, in 1818, had backed a bill for a friend for 600 francs. To meet it when it fell due two years later was impossible, and desperate were the efforts made by Castaing and his mother to put off the day of reckoning. His father, displeased with his son's conduct, would do nothing to help him. But his mother spared no effort to extricate him from his difficulties. She begged a highly placed official to plead with the insistent creditor, but all in vain. There seemed no hope of a further delay when suddenly, in the October of 1822, Castaing became the possessor of 100,000 francs. How he became possessed of this considerable sum of money forms part of a

A Book of Remarkable Criminals