Today's Stichomancy for Meyer Lansky

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela:

you've a lot of kids to raise. . . . Yes, twenty it was. All right, now! It's not ten or fifteen or twenty I'm going to give you. You're going to count for yourself. . . . One, two, three . . . and when you've had enough you just tell me and I'll stop.' And Blondie pulled out his sword and beat him till he cried for mercy."

War Paint rocked in her saddle, convulsed with mirth. Camilla, unable to control herself, blurted out:

"The beast! His heart's rotten to the core! No wonder I loathe him!"

At once War Paint's expression changed.

The Underdogs

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

The joyance that a scullion may command. But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand The mission of his bondage, or the grave May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save The perfect word that is the poet's wand!

The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones; But shapes and echoes that are never done Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones The crash of battles that are never won.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

the dark managed to fill the flask with the unseen water that was in the well. Then he screwed the top of the flask firmly in place and put the precious water in his pocket.

"All right!" he said again, in a glad voice; "now we can go back."

They returned to the mouth of the tunnel and began to creep cautiously up the incline. This time they made Scraps stay behind, for fear she would slip again; but they all managed to get up in safety and the Munchkin boy was very happy when

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac:

company, on the ground that she was ill. Such an event would, in ordinary times, have produced as much effect as the closing of the theatres in Paris; life under those circumstances seems merely incomplete. But in 1793, Madame de Dey's action was likely to have fatal results. The slightest departure from a usual custom became, almost invariably for the nobles, a matter of life or death. To fully understand the eager curiosity and searching inquiry which animated on this occasion the Norman countenances of all these rejected visitors, but more especially to enter into Madame de Dey's secret anxieties, it is necessary to explain the role she played at Carentan. The critical position in which she stood at this moment being that of many others