| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: not impress you particularly except as a very fine
tree. Its proportions are so perfect that its effect is
rather to belittle its neighbors than to show in its true
magnitude. Then, gradually, as your experience
takes cognizance of surroundings,--the size of a
sugar-pine, of a boulder, of a stream flowing near,--
the giant swells and swells before your very vision
until he seems at the last even greater than the mere
statistics of his inches had led you to believe. And
after that first surprise over finding the Sequoia
something not monstrous but beautiful in proportion has
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: unloosed all its legions. The wind blew from every quarter of the
heavens, the boat span round like a top, and the sea broke in.
"Oh! my poor child! my poor child! . . . Who will save my baby?" the
mother cried in a heart-rending voice.
"You yourself will save it," the stranger said.
The thrilling tones of that voice went to the young mother's heart and
brought hope with them; she heard the gracious words through all the
whistling of the wind and the shrieks of the passengers.
"Holy Virgin of Good Help, who art at Antwerp, I promise thee a
thousand pounds of wax and a statue, if thou wilt rescue me from
this!" cried the burgher, kneeling upon his bags of gold.
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