Today's Stichomancy for John Von Neumann

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt, Shall break on hill and plain, And put all stars and candles out Ere we be young again.

To you in distant India, these I send across the seas, Nor count it far across. For which of us forget The Indian cabinets, The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross, The pied and painted birds and beans,

A Child's Garden of Verses

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis:

They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not so brawny; they stoop more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure, unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular bodies and sharply-cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the Wolfes lived here. Their lives were like those of their class: incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses, drinking--God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives?--of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the

Life in the Iron-Mills

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain:

(surname suppressed, as before):

Wagner.--On the 10th inst., Ferguson G., the son of William L. and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day.

That merry shout no more I hear,

No laughing child I see,

No little arms are round my neck,

No feet upon my knee;

No kisses drop upon my cheek,

These lips are sealed to me.

Dear Lord, how could I give Ferguson up

To any but to Thee?

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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley:

there ages ago--and who, they fancy, has power in heaven to save them from the lava stream. And really what happened was enough to make ignorant people, such as they were, think that St. Agatha had saved them. The lava stream came straight down upon the town wall. Another foot, and it would have touched it, and have begun shoving it down with a force compared with which all the battering-rams that you ever read of in ancient histories would be child's toys. But lo and behold! when the lava stream got within a few inches of the wall it stopped, and began to rear itself upright and build itself into a wall beside the wall. It rose and rose, till I believe in one place it overtopped the wall and began