Today's Stichomancy for John Dillinger

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith:

friction-rollers in a hoisting-block, but whenever the rigging got tangled aloft he could spring up the derrick like a cat and unreeve the rope in an instant. She also wrote to Babcock, asking him to stop at her house some morning on his way to the Quarantine Landing, where he was building a retaining-wall; and when he arrived, she took him out to the shed where she kept her heavy derricks. That more experienced contractor at once became deeply interested, and made a series of sketches for her, on the back of an envelope, of an improved pintle and revolving-cap which he claimed would greatly improve the working of her derricks. These sketches she took to the village blacksmith next day, and by that

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

reverted to the United States by the treaty of Ghent, on the principle of status ante bellum, and Captain Biddle was despatched in the sloop of war, Ontario, to take formal possession.

In the winter of 1815, a law was passed by Congress prohibiting all traffic of British traders within the territories of the United States.

The favorable moment seemed now to Mr. Astor to have arrived for the revival of his favorite enterprise, but new difficulties had grown up to impede it. The Northwest Company were now in complete occupation of the Columbia River, and its chief tributary

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain:

The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and that Angelo was accessory to it.

The town was bitter against he misfortunates, and for the first few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. The grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the city jail to the county prison to await trial.

Wilson examined the finger marks on the knife handle and said to himself, "Neither of the twins made those marks." Then manifestly there was another person concerned, either in his

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 Parmenides by Plato:

by the present, for it is the nature of that which goes on, to touch both the present and the future, letting go the present and seizing the future, while in process of becoming between them.

True.

But that which is becoming cannot skip the present; when it reaches the present it ceases to become, and is then whatever it may happen to be becoming.

Clearly.

And so the one, when in becoming older it reaches the present, ceases to become, and is then older.

Certainly.