Today's Stichomancy for Liam Neeson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

theological and four cardinal virtues. (Thomas Schumacher, "The Danteum," Princeton Architectural Press, 1993)

By translating the structure, Terragni could then layer the literal and the spiritual meanings of the Poem without allowing either to dominate. These layers of meaning are native to the Divine Comedy as they are native to much medieval literature, although modern readers and tourists may not be so familiar with them. They are literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. I offer you St. Thomas of Aquinas' definition of these last three as they relate to Sacred Scripture:

. . .this spiritual sense has a threefold division. . .so far as

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber:

life, forgave him the look that he had brought into his mother's eyes.

There had never been anything extraordinary about Eddie Houghton. He had had his faults and virtues, and good and bad sides just like other boys of his age. He--oh, I am using too many words, when one slang phrase will express it. Eddie had been just a nice young kid. I think the worst thing he had ever said was "Damn!" perhaps. If he had sworn, it was with clean oaths, calculated to relieve the mind and feelings.

But the men that he shipped with during that year or more--I am sure that he had never dreamed that such men were. He had never

Buttered Side Down

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell:

torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.''[4]

[4] Vol. i, p. 227.

Three railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury--a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world. The negligence of the employes is the cause of the misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labor only lasted eight hours a day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure

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 Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar:

revertitur quaeque ibi perspexisset renuntiat.

Dum in his locis Caesar navium parandarum causa moratur, ex magna parte Morinorum ad eum legati venerunt, qui se de superioris temporis consilio excusarent, quod homines barbari et nostrae consuetudinis imperiti bellum populo Romano fecissent, seque ea quae imperasset facturos pollicerentur. Hoc sibi Caesar satis oportune accidisse arbitratus, quod neque post tergum hostem relinquere volebat neque belli gerendi propter anni tempus facultatem habebat neque has tantularum rerum occupationes Britanniae anteponendas iudicabat, magnum iis numerum obsidum imperat.

Quibus adductis eos in fidem recipit. Navibus circiter LXXX onerariis coactis contractisque, quot satis esse ad duas transportandas legiones