in vain,—till every effort of her mind,
every thought of her daily life, was pervaded by a
conviction that as she grew older from year to year,
the struggle should be more intense. The swimmer
when first he finds himself in the water, conscious
of his skill and confident in his strength, can make
his way through the water with the full command of
all his powers. But when he begins to feel that
the shore is receding from him, that his strength is
going, that the footing for which he pants is still
far beneath his feet,— that there is peril
where before he had contemplated no danger,—then
he begins to beat the water with strokes rapid but
impotent, and to waste in anxious gaspings the breath
on which his very life must depend. So it...