dares no more laugh and threaten? You know
those curved necks clothed with strength, the bent head whose nostrils
flare with pride, the tossed and waving mane, the magnificent grace of
the nervous shoulder, the great, intelligent, expectant eyes? Suddenly
the roar of waves at the farther shore! Look at that head! strong and
quiet no more; terror erects the quivering ears; the nostril sinks and
contracts with fear; the eye glares and glances from side to side, mad
with prescient instinct; the corded veins that twist forkedly from the
lip upward swell to the utmost tension of the fine skin; that sweeping
mane rises in rough undulations, the forelock is tossed back, the
shoulder grows rigid with horror, the chest rises with a long indrawn
breath of dismay. Horrible beyond all horrid sounds, the yell of a horse
in mortal fear. Do you hear it? No,--it is a picture,--the picture of a
moment between one animal that sees the impending fate, and another that
has not yet caught it;--it is human that such moments interpose between
two oceans of agony, that man can momentarily control the rush of a sea
which the brute must yield to.--So the sea rushed back.

All night long, all the long night!--long as lifetimes are, measured
with slow-dropping arteries that drip away living blood. Once I watched
by a dying woman; wild October rains poured without, but all unheard; in
the dim-lit room, scented with quaint odors of lackered cases and chests
of camphor-wood, heavy with perfumes that failed to revive, and hushed
with whispers of hopeless comment, that delicate frame and angelic
face, which the innumerable lines of age could only exalt and sweeten,
shivered with the frosts of death; every breath was a sob; every sigh,
anguish; the terrible restlessness of the struggle between soul and body
in their parting writhed in every limb;--but there were no words other
than broken cries of prayer, only half-heard on earth, till at length
the tender, wistful eyes unclosed, and in a hoarse whisper, plaintive
beyond expression, full of a desolate and immortal weariness, bearing a
conviction of eternity and exhaustion that words cannot hope to utter,
she said, "Will it never be morning?" And so this night stayed its pace;
my room grew narrow and low; the ceiling pressed on my head; the walls
forever clasped me, yet receded ever as I paced the floor; the floor
fell in strange waves under me,--yet I walked steadily, up and down, up
and down! Still the