be mistaken."

"It ought to have been behind the houses long ago," said another.

"What's o'clock?" asked a third. The inquiry made many turn their eyes
towards the great clock in the square. It had stopped an hour ago. The
hands were perfectly motionless. All who had watches simultaneously drew
them from their pockets. The motion of each was suspended; so intense, in
turn, was the hush of the breathless crowd, that you could have heard a
single tick, but there was none to hear.

"Time is no more," proclaimed a leader among the people.

"I am a ruined man," lamented a watchmaker.

"And I," ejaculated a maker of almanacks.

"What of quarter-day?" inquired a landlord and a tenant simultaneously.

"We shall never see the moon again," sobbed a pair of lovers.

"It is well this did not happen at night," observed an optimist.

"Indeed?" questioned the director of a gas company.

"I told you the Last Day would come in our time," said a preacher.

It was still long before the people realised that the trance of Time had
paralysed his daughter Mutability as well. Every operation depending on her
silent processes was arrested. The unborn could not come to life. The sick
could not die. The human frame could not waste. Every one in the enjoyment
of health and strength felt assured of the perpetual possession of these
blessings, unless he should meet with accident or violent death. But all
growth ceased, and all dissolution was stayed. Mothers looked with despair
on infants who could never be weaned or learn to walk. Expectant heirs
gazed with dismay on immortal fathers and uncles. The reigning beauties,
the fashionable boxers and opera dancers were in the highest feather. Nor
did the intellectual less rejoice, counting on endless life and unimpaired
faculties, and vowing to extend human knowledge beyond the conceivable. The
poor and the outcast, the sick and the maimed, the broken-hearted and the
dying made, indeed, a dismal outcry, the sincerity of which was doubted by
some persons.

As for our student, forgetting his faithful Vampire, he made his way to a
young lady of great personal attractions, to whom he had been attached in
former days. The sight of her beauty, and the thought that it would be
everlasting, revived his passion. To convince her of the perpetuity of her
charms, and establish a claim upon her gratitude, he cautiously revealed to
her that he was the author of this blissful state of things, and that
Tim