Living Not Dying

I am standing on the seashore  ... A ship spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean ... She is an object of beauty, and I watch her until at length she bangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky meet ... Then someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" - Gone where? Gone from my sight ... She is just as large in mast and bull and spar as she was when she left my sight, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination ... Her diminished size is in me - not in her ... And just at that moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming; and other voices take up the glad shout: "There she comes!"
And that is Living, not Dying.
        - Edward T. Sullivan

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