The rigging tautened, and the huge sails flapped in thunder as the
Harpoon sped upon her course, and all around was greatness and the
present majesty of power. Augusta looked aloft and sighed, she knew not
why. The swift blood of youth coursed through her veins, and she rejoiced
exceedingly that life and all its possibilities yet lay before her. But a
little more of that dreadful place and they would have lain behind. Her
days would have been numbered before she scarce had time to strike a blow
in the great human struggle that rages ceaselessly from age to age. The
voice of her genius would have been hushed just as its notes began to
thrill, and her message would never have been spoken in the world. But
now Time was once more before her, and oh! the nearness of Death had
taught her the unspeakable value of that one asset on which we can
rely--Life. Not, indeed, that life for which so many live--the life led
for self, and having for its principle, if not its only end, the
gratification of the desires of self; but an altogether higher life--a
life devoted to telling that which her keen instinct knew was truth, and,
however imperfectly, painting with the pigment of her noble art those
visions of beauty which sometimes seemed to rest upon her soul like
shadows from the heaven of our hones.
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