The Apocalypse Reader Part 5

DOLL.

Now SHE STEPS into the street of her town that has been cleaned by a supernatural oven. The chemical stench is left. The sky is a soft green. Behind the haze the sun hums, fuzzed like a moldy fruit. She is not quite sure where her limbs are in relation to her body. Something has happened to the air and given it a texture of fog. It is either hard to see through or her eyes are changed or there is a funny color or blur to everything and she has objects mixed up with the air. Across the street is the bank, with its mirrored exterior, and there's something on the sidewalk in front of it. What is the logic of this apocalypse? What is eradicated and what is left or half-left, zombie-like, behind? Is what's left behind a code?

Zombies are codes. They are codes of warning. They are the form of our preapocalyptic foolishness; our sort-of-dumb-sort-of-evil existence that led to this, which is our fault even if it turns out the final threat was the one from outer s.p.a.ce.

What she finds on the sidewalk will help us know. As she approaches the object she discovers that it could be one of two things: it could be a doll, or it could be a baby. If this is a doll, she thinks, then this is a sentimental apocalypse.

She can see herself kneeling at the doll, touching its cold fingers, raising her eyes as if she is being witnessed, meeting her own eyes in the mirrored bank wall. This could make the television right after all.

Luckily, when she arrives, it's not, and when she touches its fingers the fingers are like rubber. Then when she raises her eyes she is startled to find she sees eyes that are not her own; they are the eyes of a ghost who is standing in the street behind her. When she turns she cannot see the ghost, but back in the mirror, there the ghost is. The ghost doesn't really look at her. The ghost only sort of has eyes. The ghost is a little bit clothed, a little cloaked. The ghost is hard to see. It's heavier than vapor; more held together than dust, more specifically formed than constellation, and it seems, she decides, to be a male ghost. She gazes across the baby at the ghost. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she thinks. It's the three of us left to redeem civilization.

JULY FOURTH.

GOT THERE AND the ground was covered in bodies. Lay down with everybody and looked at the sky, grinning and bracing for the explosions.

THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

WE CAME AT last to the wackily fantastic land of opposites. We'd read this one in childhood. Candy tasted terrible and we all wanted liver with onions. Water got us drunk and we could only breathe when we were under it. Right was wrong and so we were very popular. Our mouths swapped spots with our a.s.sholes. Our belly b.u.t.tons turned outward, (except for George's) and our v.a.g.i.n.as, well, you had to be there. The birds under our feet annoyed us with their philosophies. It was the end of all we'd known, and our hopes sank.

MINIONS.

THE MINIONS LINED their sneakers along the wall and then made two lines, like teams at the end of a game, and each by each held hands and touched foreheads. They were past words. They'd been hollering and leafleting for months. They'd been psyching themselves up and out for years. They lay in their cots like orphans. Hands to hearts, eyes to the black air, the rafters of the bunker invisible in the dark, a sky without stars, everything celestial sprinkling the insides of their domed minds. They waited for the world to disintegrate. It would disintegrate before next light and they waited for a red and gold explosion to light the universe in one final burst. They listened to night tick through the wooden walls. It could be now, or now, or now. Someone held back a sneeze and then sneezed. They'd abandoned their timepieces in the river that evening at dusk, but at two A.M. a boy named Jonathan got up from his cot, cracked open the door, put his p.e.n.i.s out and peed. Then he went back to his cot. One woman, a secret doubter, had taken a bottle of pills before she lay down to wait and died with the click the boy made closing the door.

By morning, there have been three more suicides and two of the leaders have disappeared into the woods. One leader is weeping under a tree, fallen leaves in his fists. One leader is running, running, running, hoping he will die midstep, trying to feel the moment within each step when he is sure both feet are off the ground because he feels that if he can prolong that beat he will be flying, he will be without his body finally, he will be light, light air, light light. In the hut one minion has punched another in the chest. One is cross-legged on her cot, watching. She's vacant or else she's fuming. Three have closed themselves in the kitchen and begun to screw. Two are quietly packing their knapsacks, stuffing them as full as they can with any useful items the group had forgotten or not bothered to purge: a woolen lap blanket, a can-opener, a tin of olives, a box of matches, a comb, a tube of lip balm. By two o'clock in the afternoon the bunker is empty except for a few dead bodies and one man, badly beaten, who is clinging to his cot like it's a raft, who is gasping for breath and calling "Help! Help!"

MIRROR.

Two DAYS SINCE the apocalypse and freckles rise in the skin around my mouth. I am very close to my face, looking. Green funnels of what were pastures whirl and spit in the background. The last bits of cities are like comets and pa.s.s behind my head as if I am shooting myself repeatedly, as if I shoot myself and the fireb.a.l.l.s go in one ear and out the other. It's riveting. It's hypnotic. My face contains more colors than are left in the universe. I watched Miranda's teeth panic and run away. I watched Amber buckle. Now, in the mirror, there is no comparison. It's me, and everything, and that's all.

WITCHES.

THREE GIRLS, MAYBE eight each, stand with sticks at a pothole of water. They're leaning, or stirring. It's hard to tell, because they're frozen, although it's summer. They're looking into the water together, with their sticks. Dim oils sketch the surface like lines from skating. One girl, the one in the middle, from this angle, anyway, has a piece of gra.s.s between her teeth, and she's grimacing. The end of the gra.s.s has fluffy seeds, and normally, it'd be bobbing. There's breeze, yet all is still. In this apocalypse, the air, it seems, can move, though nothing in it can. Where do you draw the line? Even seeds that could drift like smoke stick. There's no logic in it. Especially with pages acc.u.mulating, time continuing to pa.s.s. The girl on the supposed left is turning to dust as we speak, but invisibly, like a figure made of icing going stale. Touch her and pool.

I know what they were doing. The girls were playing "three witches." They were making magic. They were poking their stew. They kept meaning to get on with their game. They'd planned to capture someone, and they'd planned to turn a bunch of things into other things. But after a while the entire plot had been taken over by recipes for potions. Then, of all things, this is what happened.

THE LAST MAN.

Adam Nemett.

EVEN HITLER WAS on meth. I saw it on the History Channel. Under the green light of the German morning, Hitler's personal physician-Dr. Theo Morell-would enter his bedroom to administer charisma intravenously: a c.o.c.ktail injection of methamphetamines and morphine, plus cocaine eyedrops. Hitler never asked what was in the needle and Theo never offered the secret. He simply upped the dosage until Adolf succ.u.mbed to something like Parkinson's, something like addiction, and drowned in his own sea.

For my part, I never a.s.sumed Vitali Zinchenko was real-real as in unenhanced, unadulterated-only that his was an evolved consciousness and, even though I'd fail to comprehend the extent of his genius, I would be among the tawdry heroes who faked greatness, who sat at the feet of his being and came to cla.s.s. I only and infinitely believed believed in him. But I never a.s.sumed he was real. Now the lights are going off and the electricity is leaving us, maybe forever. The tide is coming in. in him. But I never a.s.sumed he was real. Now the lights are going off and the electricity is leaving us, maybe forever. The tide is coming in.

The news claims it's the biggest flood since Noah. A real live end. If it's going to happen, I'm hoping for a giant blue wave, an emblematic tsunami ripped from a j.a.panese woodcut, its many crests crashing and bouncing back like a cavalry charge, galloping hooves beneath gaunt hors.e.m.e.n. But it's more like a bathtub slowly filling. From the roof of Wallace Hall, we see the gray swell on the horizon. The sky is not falling; the ground is just rising up to meet it.

IT WAS IN my senior year of college that I stopped going to cla.s.s and became a superhero. I came from humble beginnings and I met the requirements: a restlessness; a germ of majesty; a l.u.s.t for significance; a love of decadent costuming, of masks. We all did. But Vitali gathered our spark and set the place aflame. Like our fathers before us, we occupied campus buildings, but swore never to jump ship like those d.a.m.ned dirty longhairs did. We were making progress against the powers that be. The news told stories about us. And then this. A major disaster to divert the public's attention. The adults are gone now. We're cut off. The campus belongs to Vitali, and when the electricity is gone the students will look for him to glow in the dark. They're downstairs, the student body, just babies really. There are a handful of superheroes here on the roof. Vitali can see it, he already knows. Man is weak and known to fall apart. He tells us to keep our masks on, no matter what, keep them on. Like all leaders, our mystery is our power.

We see entire grids going, browning out one by one. Our buildings and trees, they are disappearing in the evening, bequeathing us a gray and choppy sea. Before everything goes dark and the voltage buzz is hushed, we look to each others' masks, to the eyes behind the masks, and we know all that will remain is our lingering dependence-on the gadgets and microchips that hummed us to sleep at night; on the chemicals, the bees in our blood, enhancing muscle and mind; on Him, The Ubermensch: our Vitali Zinchenko.

I am his second-in-command. I am twenty-two.

I look towards Vitali. He looks toward the gray and choppy sea.

"You need to speak to them," I say.

"Where is Ryan?" he says, not looking back.

Ryan is online, downstairs in a computer cl.u.s.ter, taking one last stroke to Cytherea's wet and powerful o.r.g.a.s.ms, hoping he'll be able to return to paper-based p.o.r.n once his streaming video G.o.ddess is gone.

"Where is Mike?" Vitali says.

Mike is in the belfry of the gradschool clocktower, screaming and shooting his father's rifle down at the rising waters below. The bullets are splashing. It looks like the flood is firing back.

"Where are you?" he says.

I'm still here. I am his second-in-command.

"We need them to be strong," Vitali says. "I'm going to caution them about Nietzsche's concept of The Last Man-cut off, apathetic, weak. Lacking a certain imagination imagination."

I've read some of what he told me to read and so I say: "Right: nihilism."

His cheeks smile around his mask.

"Either that, or I'll just suggest that they f.u.c.k each other senseless and start repopulating the earth."

I'm too nervous but I manage a smile. The mask hides it from him completely.

"Listen to me," he says, "here is your job." He pulls from his pocket three orange bottles of pills. Vitali's pills for focus, pills for energy, pills for strength: his charisma. He shakes them once, a fistful of maracas.

"Does anyone else know?"

"Of course not," I say. "No."

"Your job is to hold these. Hold them quietly. Give me one per day."

"Of course," I say. "That's the dosage."

"Listen to me," he says. "They're not going to last."

He's right. There are only two or three left in each bottle. Maybe enough for a week. The news claims we'll be cut off much longer than that.

"Some days, you're going to administer a placebo," he says. "Don't tell me when. I'll close my eyes. Otherwise they're not going to last."

I hate to state the obvious, but: "Vitali, we're cut off and I don't actually know how to make placebo pills."

"Use your imagination," he says. "It's in your hands now. It's up to you."

He pops one of each and Transfers the bottles to me. They're in my hands now. I am who it is up to.

Then our grid goes and the world is blind.

"Hold them quietly," he says. "Our mystery is our power."

Vitali lights a candle. He turns from the flood and walks to the door at the center of the roof. He walks downstairs to orate, to lead, perchance to drown.

I squeeze the pill bottles, open one of the childproof caps and pour some into my palm. I look at them, these babies, these tiny, smooth secrets. By the time they run out maybe he'll be real.

EARTH'S HOLOCAUST.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

ONCE UPON A time-but whether in the time past or time to come is a matter of little or no moment-this wide world had become so overburdened with an acc.u.mulation of worn-out trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire. The site fixed upon, at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast a.s.semblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral truth, heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to journey thither and be present. At my arrival, although the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet comparatively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a faroff star alone in the firmament, there was merely visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have antic.i.p.ated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue. With every moment, however, there came foottravellers, women holding up their ap.r.o.ns, men on horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering baggage wagons, and other vehicles, great and small, and from far and near, laden with articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be burned.

"What materials have been used to kindle the flame?" inquired I of a bystander, for I was desirous of knowing the whole process of the affair, from beginning to end.

The person whom I addressed was a grave man, fifty years old or thereabout, who had evidently come thither as a looker-on; he struck me immediately as having weighed for himself the true value of life and its circ.u.mstances, and therefore as feeling little personal interest in whatever judgment the world might form of them. Before answering my question, he looked me in the face, by the kindling light of the fire.

"Oh, some very dry combustibles," replied he, "and extremely suitable to the purpose-no other, in fact, than yesterday's newspapers, last month's magazines, and last year's withered leaves. Here now comes some antiquated trash, that will take fire like a handful of shavings."

As he spoke, some rough-looking men advanced to the verge of the bonfire, and threw in, as it appeared, all the rubbish of the Herald's Office-the blazonry of coat armor; the crests and devices of ill.u.s.trious families; pedigrees that extended back, like lines of light, into the mist of the dark ages; together with stars, garters, and embroidered collars; each of which, as paltry a bauble as it might appear to the uninstructed eye, had once possessed vast significance, and was still, in truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral or material facts by the worshippers of the gorgeous past. Mingled with this confused heap, which was tossed into the flames by armfulls at once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, comprising those of all the European sovereignties, and Napoleon's decoration of the Legion of Honor, the ribbon of which were entangled with those of the ancient order of St. Louis. There, too, were the medals of our own society of Cincinnati, by means of which, as history tells us, an order of hereditary knights came near being const.i.tuted out of the king-quellers of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of n.o.bility of German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the brand-new parchment of the latest lord, who has received his honors from the fair hand of Victoria.

At sight of these dense volumes of smoke, mingled with vivid jets of flame that gushed and eddied forth from this immense pile of earthly distinctions, the mult.i.tude of plebeian spectators sent up a joyous shout, and clapped their hands with an emphasis that made the welkin echo. That was their moment of triumph, achieved after long ages, over creatures of the same clay and the same spiritual infirmities, who had dared to a.s.sume the privileges due only to Heaven's better workmanship. But now there rushed towards the blazing heap a gray-haired man, of stately presence, wearing a coat from the breast of which a star, or other badge of rank, seemed to have been forcibly wrenched away. He had not the tokens of intellectual power in his face; but still there was the demeanor-the habitual, and almost native dignity-of one who had been born to the idea of his own social superiority, and had never felt it questioned, till that moment.

"People," cried he, gazing at the ruin of what was dearest to his eyes with grief and wonder, but nevertheless, with a degree of stateliness "people, what have you done! This fire is consuming all that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented your relapse thither. We-the men of the privileged orders-were those who kept alive, from age to age, the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle and generous thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and delicate life! With the n.o.bles, too, you cast off the poet, the painter, the sculptor-all the beautiful arts; for we were their patrons and created the atmosphere in which they flourish. In abolishing the majestic distinctions of rank, society loses not only its grace, but its steadfastness-"

More he would doubtless have spoken; but here there arose an outcry, sportive, contemptuous, and indignant, that altogether drowned the appeal of the fallen n.o.bleman, insomuch that, casting one look of despair at his own half-burned pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd, glad to shelter himself under his new-found insignificance.

"Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him into the same fire!" shouted a rude figure, spurning the embers with his foot. "And, henceforth, let no man dare to show a piece of musty parchment as his warrant for lording it over his fellows! If he have strength of arm, well and good; it is one species of superiority. If he have wit, wisdom, courage, force of character, let these attributes do for him what they may. But, from this day forward, no mortal must hope for place and consideration by reckoning up the mouldy bones of his ancestors! That nonsense is done away."

"And in good time," remarked the grave observer by my side-in a low voice however-"if no worse nonsense come in its place. But, at all events, this species of nonsense has fairly lived out its life."

There was little s.p.a.ce to muse or moralize over the embers of this timehonored rubbish; for, before it was half burned out, there came another mult.i.tude from beyond the sea, bearing the purple robes of royalty, and the crowns, globes, and sceptres of emperors and kings. All these had been condemned as useless baubles; playthings, at best, fit only for the infancy of the world, or rods to govern and chastise it in its nonage; but with which universal manhood, at its full-grown stature, could no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt had these regal insignia now fallen that the gilded crown and tinseled robes of the player-king, from Drury Lane Theatre, had been thrown in among the rest, doubtless as a mockery of his brother monarchs on the great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to discern the crown jewels of England glowing and flashing in the midst of the fire. Some of them had been delivered down from the time of the Saxon princes; others were purchased with vast revenues, or, perchance, ravished from the dead brows of the native potentates of Hindostan; and the whole now blazed with a dazzling l.u.s.tre, as if a star had fallen in that spot, and been shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined monarchy had no reflection, save in those inestimable precious stones. But enough on this subject! It were but tedious to describe how the Emperor of Austria's mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar of Russia's sceptre, which he afterwards flung into the flames.

"The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable here," observed my new acquaintance, as the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a royal wardrobe. "Let us get to windward, and see what they are doing on the other side of the bonfire."

We accordingly pa.s.sed around, and were just in time to witness the arrival of a vast procession of Washingtonians-as the votaries of temperance call themselves now a days-accompanied by thousands of the Irish disciples of Father Mathew, with that great apostle at their head. They brought a rich contribution to the bonfire; being nothing less than all the hogsheads and barrels of liquor in the world, which they rolled before them across the prairie.

"Now, my children," cried Father Mathew, when they reached the verge of the fire, "one shove more, and the work is done! And now let us stand off and see Satan deal with his own liquor!"

Accordingly, having placed their wooden vessels within reach of the flames, the procession stood off at a safe distance, and soon beheld them burst into a blaze that reached the clouds, and threatened to set the sky itself on fire. And well it might. For here was the whole world's stock of spirituous liquors, which, instead of kindling a frenzied light in the eyes of individual topers as of yore, soared upwards with a bewildering gleam that startled all mankind. It was the aggregate of that fierce fire, which would otherwise have scorched the hearts of millions. Meantime, numberless bottles of precious wine were flung into the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it loved them, and grew, like other drunkards, the merrier and fiercer for what it quaffed. Never again will the insatiable thirst of the fire fiend be so pampered! Here were the treasures of famous bon vivants- liquors that had been tossed on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, and h.o.a.rded long in the recesses of the earth-the pale, the gold, the ruddy juice of whatever vineyards were most delicate-the entire vintage of Tokay-all mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the common pothouse, and contributing to heighten the self-same blaze. And while it rose in a gigantic spire, that seemed to wave against the arch of the firmament, and combine itself with the light of stars, the mult.i.tude gave a shout, as if the broad earth were exulting in its deliverance from the curse of ages.

But the joy was not universal. Many deemed that human life would be gloomier than ever, when that brief illumination should sink down. While the reformers were at work, I overheard muttered expostulations from several respectable gentlemen with red noses, and wearing gouty shoes; and a ragged worthy, whose face looked like a hearth where the fire is burned out, now expressed his discontent more openly and boldly.

"What is this world good for," said the Last Toper, "now that we can never be jolly any more? What is to comfort the poor man in sorrow and perplexity? How is he to keep his heart warm against the cold winds of this cheerless earth? And what do you propose to give him in exchange for the solace that you take away? How are old friends to sit together by the fireside, without a cheerful gla.s.s between them? A plague upon your reformation! It is a sad world, a cold world, a selfish world, a low world, not worth an honest fellow's living in, now that good fellowship is gone for ever!"

This harangue excited great mirth among the bystanders. But, preposterous as was the sentiment, I could not help commiserating the forlorn condition of the Last Toper, whose boon companions had dwindled away from his side, leaving the poor fellow without a soul to countenance him in sipping his liquor, nor indeed, any liquor to sip. Not that this was quite the true state of the case; for I had observed him, at a critical moment, filch a bottle of fourth-proof brandy that fell beside the bonfire, and hide it in his pocket.

The spirituous and fermented liquors being thus disposed of, the zeal of the reformers next induced them to replenish the fire with all the boxes of tea and bags of coffee in the world. And now came the planters of Virginia, bringing their crops of tobacco. These, being cast upon the heap of inutility, aggregated it to the size of a mountain, and incensed the atmosphere with such potent fragrance that methought we should never draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice seemed to startle the lovers of the weed, more than any that they had hitherto witnessed.

"Well, they've put my pipe out," said an old gentleman, flinging it into the flames in a pet. "What is this world coming to? Everything rich and racy-all the spice of life-is to be condemned as useless. Now that they have kindled the bonfire, if these nonsensical reformers would fling themselves into it, all would be well enough!"

"Be patient," responded a staunch conservative, "it will come to that in the end. They will first fling us in, and finally themselves."

From the general and systematic measures of reform, I now turned to consider the individual contributions to this memorable bonfire. In many instances these were of a very amusing character. One poor fellow threw in his empty purse, and another a bundle of counterfeit or insolvable banknotes. Fashionable ladies threw in their last season's bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and much other half-worn milliner's ware, all of which proved even more evanescent in the fire than it had been in the fashion. A mult.i.tude of lovers of both s.e.xes-discarded maids or bachelors, and couples mutually weary of one another-tossed in bundles of perfumed letters and enamored sonnets. A hack politician, being deprived of bread by the loss of office, threw in his teeth, which happened to be false ones. The Rev. Sydney Smith-having voyaged across the Atlantic for that sole purpose-came up to the bonfire with a bitter grin, and threw in certain repudiated bonds, fortified though they were with the broad seal of a sovereign state. A little boy of five years old, in the premature manliness of the present epoch, threw in his playthings; a college graduate, his diploma; an apothecary, ruined by the spread of h.o.m.oeopathy, his whole stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, his library; a parson, his old sermons; and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code of manners, which he had formerly written down for the benefit of the next generation. A widow, resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her dead husband's miniature. A young man, jilted by his mistress, would willingly have flung his own desperate heart into the flames, but could find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An American author, whose works were neglected by the public, threw his pen and paper into the bonfire, and betook himself to some less discouraging occupation. It somewhat startled me to overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and petticoats into the flames, and a.s.sume the garb, together with the manners, duties, offices, and responsibilities, of the opposite s.e.x.

What favor was accorded to this scheme, I am unable to say; my attention being suddenly drawn to a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the fire, amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of the world. A good man, however, ran to her rescue.

"Patience, my poor girl!" said he, as he drew her back from the fierce embrace of the destroying angel. "Be patient, and abide Heaven's will. So long as you possess a living soul, all may be restored to its first freshness. These things of matter, and creations of human fantasy, are fit for nothing but to be burned, when once they have had their day. But your day is Eternity!"

"Yes," said the wretched girl, whose frenzy seemed now to have sunk down into deep despondency, "yes; and the sunshine is blotted out of it!"

It was now rumored among the spectators that all the weapons and munitions of war were to be thrown into the bonfire, with the exception of the world's stock of gunpowder, which, as the safest mode of disposing of it, had already been drowned in the sea. This intelligence seemed to awaken great diversity of opinion. The hopeful philanthropist esteemed it a token that the millennium was already come; while persons of another stamp, in whose view mankind was a breed of bulldogs, prophesied that all the old stoutness, fervor, n.o.bleness, generosity, and magnanimity of the race would disappear-these qualities, as they affirmed, requiring blood for their nourishment. They comforted themselves, however, in the belief that the proposed abolition of war was impracticable, for any length of time together.

Be that as it might, numberless great guns, whose thunder had long been the voice of battle-the artillery of the Armada, the battering trains of Marlborough, and the adverse cannon of Napoleon and Wellington-were trundled into the midst of the fire. By the continual addition of dry combustibles, it had now waxed so intense that neither bra.s.s nor iron could withstand it. It was wonderful to behold how these terrible instruments of slaughter melted away like playthings of wax. Then the armies of the earth wheeled around the mighty furnace, with their military music playing triumphant marches, and flung in their muskets and swords. The standard-bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at their banners, all tattered with shot-holes, and inscribed with the names of victorious fields, and, giving them a last flourish on the breeze, they lowered them into the flame, which s.n.a.t.c.hed them upward in its rush toward the clouds. This ceremony being over, the world was left without a single weapon on in its hands, except, possibly, a few old king's arms and rusty swords, and other trophies of the revolution, in some of our state armories. And now the drums were beaten and the trumpets brayed all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of universal and eternal peace, and the announcement that glory was no longer to be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be the contention of the human race to work out the greatest mutual good, and that beneficence, in the future annals of the earth, would claim the praise of valor. The blessed tidings were accordingly promulgated, and caused infinite rejoicings among those who had stood aghast at the horror and absurdity of war.

But I saw a grim smile pa.s.s over the seared visage of a stately old commander-by his war-worn figure and rich military dress, he might have been one of Napoleon's famous marshals-who, with the rest of the world's soldiery, had just flung away the sword that had been familiar to his right hand for half a century.

"Aye, aye!" grumbled he. "Let them proclaim what they please; but, in the end, we shall find that all this foolery has only made more work for the armorers and cannon foundries."

"Why, sir," exclaimed I, in astonishment, "do you imagine that the human race will ever so far return on the steps of its past madness, as to weld another sword or cast another cannon?"

"There will be no need," observed, with a sneer, one who neither felt benevolence, nor had faith in it. "When Cain wished to slay his brother, he was at no loss for a weapon."

"We shall see," replied the veteran commander. "If I am mistaken, so much the better; but in my opinion-without pretending to philosophize about the matter-the necessity of war lies far deeper than these honest gentlemen suppose. What! Is there a field for all the petty disputes of individuals, and shall there be no great law court for the settlement of national difficulties? The battlefield is the only court where such suits can be tried!"

"You forget, General," rejoined I, "that, in this advanced stage of civilization, Reason and Philanthropy combined will const.i.tute just such a tribunal as is requisite."

"Ah, I had forgotten that, indeed!" said the old warrior, as he limped away.

The fire was now to be replenished with materials that had hitherto been considered of even greater importance to the well-being of society than the warlike munitions which we had already seen consumed. A body of reformers had travelled all over the earth, in quest of the machinery by which the different nations were accustomed to inflict the punishment of death. A shudder pa.s.sed through the mult.i.tude, as these ghastly emblems were dragged forward. Even the flames seemed at first to shrink away, displaying the shape and murderous contrivance of each in a full blaze of light, which, of itself, was sufficient to convince mankind of the long and deadly error of human law. Those old implements of cruelty, those horrible monsters of mechanism, those inventions which it seemed to demand something worse than man's natural heart to contrive, and which had lurked in the dusky nooks of ancient prisons, the subject of terrorstricken legends, were now brought forth to view. Headsmen's axes, with the rust of n.o.ble and royal blood upon them, and a vast collection of halters that had choked the breath of plebeian victims, were thrown in together. A shout greeted the arrival of the guillotine, which was thrust forward on the same wheels that had borne it from one to another of the bloodstained streets of Paris. But the loudest roar of applause went up, telling the distant sky of the triumph of the earth's redemption, when the gallows made its appearance. An ill-looking fellow, however, rushed forward, and, putting himself in the path of the reformers, bellowed hoa.r.s.ely, and fought with brute fury to stay their progress.

It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that the executioner should thus do his best to vindicate and uphold the machinery by which he himself had his livelihood, and worthier individuals their death. But it deserved special note that men of a far different sphere-even of that cla.s.s in whose guardianship the world is apt to trust its benevolence-were found to take the hangman's view of the question.

"Stay, my brethren!" cried one of them. "You are misled by a false philanthropy!-you know not what you do. The gallows is a heaven-ordained instrument! Bear it back, then, reverently, and set it up in its old place, else the world will fall to speedy ruin and desolation!"

"Onward, onward!" shouted a leader in the reform. "Into the flames with the accursed instrument of man's b.l.o.o.d.y policy! How can human law inculcate benevolence and love while it persists in setting up the gallows as its chief symbol? One heave more, good friends, and the world will be redeemed from its greatest error!"