Today's Stichomancy for Dan Brown

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo:

his great, broad shoulders, and he saw the place where he dwelt in her heart.

Chapter XIV

THE "Leap of Death" implements were being carried from the ring, and Jim turned away to superintend their loading.

Performers again rushed by each other on their way to and from the main tent.

Polly stood in the centre of the lot, frowning and anxious. The mere mention of the pastor's name had made it seem impossible for her to ride to-night. For hours she had been whipping herself up to the point of doing it, and now her courage failed her. She

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne:

Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off.

We'll pay them in money--said the king.

Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the minister.--I'll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth Francis the First.

Your honour stands pawn'd already in this matter, answered Monsieur le Premier.

Then, Mons. le Premier, said the king, by. . .we'll go to war with 'em.

Chapter 2.LVII.

Albeit, gentle reader, I have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully (according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has vouchsafed me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry:

He's politically and ostensibly dead. It ain't fair. Why should they keep this thing up? If they want Spain licked, why don't they turn the San Augustine Rifles and Joe Seely's ranger company and a car-load of West Texas deputy-sheriffs onto these Spaniards, and let us exonerate them from the face of the earth? I never did,' says I, 'care much about fighting by the Lord Chesterfield ring rules. I'm going to hand in my resignation and go home if anybody else I am personally acquainted with gets hurt in this war. If you can get somebody in my place, Sam,' says I, 'I'll quit the first of next week. I don't want to work in an army that don't give its help a chance. Never mind my wages,' says I; 'let the Secretary of the Treasury keep

Options

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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift:

nature worthy her royal consideration, and the next parliament, in their great wisdom cast but an eye towards the deplorable case of their old philomath, that annually bestows his poetical good wishes on them, I am sure there is one Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; would soon be truss'd up for his bloody predictions, and putting good subjects in terror of their lives: And that henceforward to murder a man by way of prophecy, and bury him in a printed letter, either to a lord or commoner, shall as legally entitle him to the present possession of Tyburn, as if he robb'd on the highway, or cut your throat in bed.

I shall demonstrate to the judicious, that France and Rome are at