COLUMBUS' SUPREME SUSPENSE.
Maurice Thompson, an American poet and novelist. Born at Fairfield, Ind., September 9, 1844. From his "Byways and Bird-notes."
What a thrill is dashed through a moment of expectancy, a point of supreme suspense, when by some time of preparation the source of sensation is ready for a consummation —a catastrophe! At such a time one's soul is isolated so perfectly that it feels not the remotest influence from any other of all the universe. The moment preceding the old patriarch's first glimpse of the promised land; that point of time between certainty and uncertainty, between pursuit and capture, whereinto are crowded all the hopes of a lifetime, as when the brave old sailor from Genoa first heard the man up in the rigging utter the shout of discovery; the moment of awful hope, like that when Napoleon watched the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, is not to be described. There is but one such crisis for any man. It is the yes or no of destiny. It comes, he lives a lifetime in its span; it goes, and he never can pass that point again.
Harper's Weekly.
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS.
Bas-relief on the New York Monument.
(See page [244].)