Today's Stichomancy for Muhammad Ali

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift:

This great conjunction will begin to operate on Saturday the 29th instant. Accordingly, about eight at night, as Senezino shall begin at the Opera, si videte, he shall be observ'd to make an unusual motion; upon which the audience will be affected with a red suffusion over their countenance: And because a strong succession of the muscles of the belly is necessary towards performing this great operation, both sexes will be thrown into a profuse involuntary laughter. Then (to use the modest terms of Anaximander) shall negative quantity be turn'd into positive, etc. Time never beheld, nor will it ever assemble, such a number of untouch'd virgins within those walls! but alas! such will be

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale:

And all the villages thereof Men crying for the gift of love With outstretched hands.

Voices that called with ceaseless crying, The broken and the blind, the dying, And those grown dumb Beneath oppression, and he heard Upon their lips a single word, "Come!"

Their cries engulfed him like the night, The moon put out her placid light

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare:

Although I know my years be past the best, I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest. But wherefore says my love that she is young? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue, And age, in love, loves not to have years told. Therefore, I'll lie with love, and love with me, Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.

II.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

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 Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

and overpowered by Amster and the policeman.

A quarter of an hour later the cabs drove back toward the city. Inside one cowered Egon Langen, watched by the policeman and Amster. Berner was on the box beside the driver, telling the now interested man the story of what had happened to his dear young lady. In the other cab sat Asta Langen with Kurt von Mayringen and Muller.

"Do you feel better now?" asked the young commissioner in sincere sympathy that was mingled with admiration for the delicate beauty of the girl beside him, an admiration heightened by her romantic story and marvelous escape.

Asta nodded and answered gently: "I feel as if some terrible weight