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 Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis:

Miss Vance sighed and turned to the stage, but Frances still watched the opposite box. It seemed as if the passion within her had cleared her eyes. They never had seen George as they now saw him.

Was that her son? Was it that little priggish, insignificant fellow that she had made a god of? He was dull, commonplace! Satisfied to sit dumb in the background and take orders from those bourgeois French Jews!

The play went on, but she saw nothing but George and his wife.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon:

scarcely two centuries ago, is it to be believed that this same notion of a fatherland was conceived to have the same meaning as at present by French princes like the great Conde, who allied themselves with the foreigner against their sovereign? And yet again, the same word had it not a sense very different from the modern for the French royalist emigrants, who thought they obeyed the laws of honour in fighting against France, and who from their point of view did indeed obey them, since the feudal law bound the vassal to the lord and not to the soil, so that where the sovereign was there was the true fatherland?

Numerous are the words whose meaning has thus profoundly changed

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas:

"Ah, PARDIEU! Is that you?" said Porthos to D'Artagnan. "You are right welcome. Excuse my not coming to meet you; but," added he, looking at D'Artagnan with a certain degree of uneasiness, "you know what has happened to me?"

"No."

"Has the host told you nothing, then?"

"I asked after you, and came up as soon as I could."

Porthos seemed to breathe more freely.

"And what has happened to you, my dear Porthos?" continued D'Artagnan.

"Why, on making a thrust at my adversary, whom I had already hit

The Three Musketeers

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 Rig Veda:

within their lips, And strew the grass before the light, have decked themselves with high renown.

5 Immortal Agni, give the chiefs, heroes who institute the rite, Heroes' illustrious, lofty fame, who at the synod met for praise presented me with fifty steeds.

The Rig Veda