re quickly confronted with the
terror-stricken thousands of the suburbs, who were flocking to the city
for refuge. And all through the dragging hours the same despairing
reports flowed in from the remoter rural districts; everywhere the
Terror walked, and men were dying like flies. From ocean to ocean, from
the lakes to the gulf, the shadow rushed, and now the whole land lay in
darkness.

"Such was the situation in what was then the United States of America,
and similar conditions prevailed throughout the habitable world. London
and Hong-Kong, Vienna and Pekin, Buenos Ayres and Archangel--from every
direction came the same inquiry, to every questioner was returned the
same answer. It was the end of all things.

"Coincidently with this great recession of the human tide, occurred the
eclipse of industry, science, and, indeed, every form of thought and
progress. The plough rusted in the furrow, the half-formed web dropped
to pieces in the loom, the very crops stood unharvested in the fields,
to be finally devoured by the birds and by a horde of rats and mice. Up
to the last moment there had been confusion and dismay certainly, but
the wheels of trade and of the civil administration had continued to
turn; men had stood at their posts in answer to the call of duty or
impressed by the blind instinct of habit. And then, suddenly, the sun
went down, only to rise again upon a silent land.

"The relapse into barbarism was swift. The few who had escaped were
segregated from one another in small family groups, each man content
with the bare necessities of animal existence and fearing the face of
the stranger. Under such circumstances, there could be but little
neighborly intercourse, and the ancient highways speedily became
overgrown with grass and weeds, or else they were undermined and washed
out by the winter storms. It was not until the second generation after
the Terror that men once more began to draw together, in obedience to
inherited instincts, and even then the new movement must have been
largely brought about through the increasing aggressions of the
Doomsmen. But of this in another place.

"It has been asserted that fire played a principal part in the
destruction of the ancient cities, and it was at one time supposed that
these extensive conflagrations were partly accidental and partly
attributable to the wide-spread lawlessness that marked the closing
hours of the greatest drama in all history. But later researches