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 Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy:

time of his birth. No, it is not natural. A pure young girl wants one thing,--children. Children, yes, not a lover." . . .

"But," said I, with astonishment, "how would the human race continue?"

"But what is the use of its continuing?" he rejoined, vehemently.

"What! What is the use? But then we should not exist."

"And why is it necessary that we should exist?"

"Why, to live, to be sure."

"And why live? The Schopenhauers, the Hartmanns, and all the Buddhists, say that the greatest happiness is Nirvana, Non-Life;

The Kreutzer Sonata

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne:

"You are in the midst of friends."

"Friends!--for me! friends!" exclaimed the stranger, hiding his face in his hands. "No--never--leave me! leave me!"

Then he rushed to the side of the plateau which overlooked the sea, and remained there a long time motionless.

Harding rejoined his companions and related to them what had just happened.

"Yes! there is some mystery in that man's life," said Gideon Spilett, "and it appears as if he had only re-entered society by the path of remorse."

"I don't know what sort of a man we have brought here," said the sailor.

The Mysterious Island

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne:

the Lloyd's surveyor, had the services of such a one been called in requisition, must have found abundant subject of remark.

For time, during her three years' inaction, had eaten deep into the Dream and her fittings; she had sold in consequence a shade above her value as old junk; and the three adventurers had scarce been able to afford even the most vital repairs. The rigging, indeed, had been partly renewed, and the rest set up; all Grant Sanderson's old canvas had been patched together into one decently serviceable suit of sails; Grant Sanderson's masts still stood, and might have wondered at themselves. "I haven't the heart to tap them," Captain Wicks used to observe,

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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells:

own, diverged.

I had thought when I married that the matter of womankind had ended for me. I have tried to tell all that sex and women had been to me up to my married life with Margaret and our fatal entanglement, tried to show the queer, crippled, embarrassed and limited way in which these interests break upon the life of a young man under contemporary conditions. I do not think my lot was a very exceptional one. I missed the chance of sisters and girl playmates, but that is not an uncommon misadventure in an age of small families; I never came to know any woman at all intimately until I was married to Margaret. My earlier love affairs were encounters of