Today's Stichomancy for Leon Trotsky

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

beyond his prowess or his skill, for Martians are at best but poor climbers. Upon the entire surface of that ancient planet I never before had seen a hill or mountain that exceeded four thousand feet in height above the dead sea bottoms, and as the ascent was usually gradual, nearly to their summits they presented but few opportunities for the practice of climbing. Nor would the Martians have embraced even such opportunities as might present themselves, for they could always find a circuitous route about the base of any eminence, and these roads they preferred and followed in preference to the shorter but more arduous ways.

The Gods of Mars

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from

Walden

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

XVI STOP, THIEF! XVII A BUNCH OF LETTERS XVIII MISS COBB'S BURGLAR XIX NO MARRIAGE IN HEAVEN XX EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY XXI THE MUTINY XXII HOME TO ROOST XXIII BACK TO NATURE XIV LIKE DUCKS TO WATER XXV THE FIRST FRUITS XXVI OVER THE FENCE IS OUT

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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac:

The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends, with angelic patience.

Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned, he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed to a different course of action. But--admire the good fortune of men who are methodical--if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by the revolution of July he would not have got