He trod the winepress alone. With
unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took
leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard
the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree.
As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison-walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should
will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he
looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders, on its far sails
whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling shoreward
to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening
arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the
stars.
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