Today's Stichomancy for George S. Patton

Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty So swiftly, as a portion of these angels Disturbed the subject of your elements.

The rest remained, and they began this art Which thou discernest, with so great delight That never from their circling do they cease.

The occasion of the fall was the accursed Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen By all the burden of the world constrained.

Those whom thou here beholdest modest were To recognise themselves as of that goodness

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

as a whole could do nothing, could understand nothing. New York in the darkness peered and listened to these distant sounds until presently they died away as suddenly as they had begun. "What could be happening?" They asked it in vain.

A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows of upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, gliding slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electric lights came on again, and an uproar of nocturnal newsvendors began in the streets.

The units of that vast and varied population bought and learnt what had happened; there had been a fight and New York had

ing her on the shoulder. I saw his tiny fat arm rise and fall in a workmanlike manner. And then the four cottage windows of the Diana came into view retreating swiftly down the river. The sashes were up, and one of the white calico curtains was fluttered straight out like a streamer above the agi- tated water of the wake.

To be thus tricked out of one's turn was an un- heard of occurrence. In my agent's office, where I went to complain at once, they protested with apol- ogies they couldn't understand how the mistake

Falk

day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and thus passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the centuries, come storm, come shine, drawing its sustenance from the cool bosom of its mother earth, and as the slow years roll by, learning the great mysteries of growth and of decay. And so on and on through generations, outliving individuals, customs, dynasties -- all save the landscape it adorns and human nature -- till the appointed day when the wind wins the long battle and rejoices over a reclaimed space, or decay puts the last stroke to his fungus-fingered work.

Ah, one should always think twice before one cuts down a tree!

Allan Quatermain