I am standing on the seashore and a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breezes and departs for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at last she is only a ribbon of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, "There, she's gone."

Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she's gone," there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "There she comes."

And that is what people call dying.