have
evolved a new theory, and it now seems probable that the torch was
employed by the authorities themselves as a final and truly a desperate
measure. An heroic cautery, but, alas, a useless one.

"The comparative exemption of New York from the universal fate goes to
support rather than to discredit this hypothesis. It escaped the
dynamite cartridge and the torch simply because in that city no
recognized authority remained in power; there was no one to carry out
the imperative orders of the federal government. There were, of course,
many isolated cases of incendiarism, but the city did not suffer from
any general and organized conflagration, as was the fate of Philadelphia
and St. Louis and New Orleans. The destiny of the metropolis was decided
in a different way; already it had passed into the keeping of the
Doomsmen.

"In effect, then, the highly civilized North American continent had
relapsed, within the brief period of ninety years, into its primeval
estate. In every direction stretched an inhospitable wilderness of
morass and forest, with a few feeble settlements of the Stockade people
fringing the principal waterways, and here and there the smoke of an
encampment of the Painted Men rising in a thin spiral from out of the
vast ocean of green leaves. To-day the wild boar ranges where once the
tide of human passion most turbulently flowed, and the poor herdsman,
eating his noonday curds from a wooden bowl, crushes with indifferent
heel the priceless bit of faience lying half hidden in the rotting
leaves. Everywhere, the old order changing and disappearing, only to
recreate itself in form ever more fantastic and enfeebled, a dead being,
and yet inextricably bound up with the life of the new age. And over
all, the shadow of Doom, gigantic, threatening, omnipotent."

III

THE NEW WORLD

Again we make acknowledgment to the "Laudable" Vigilas and quote at
large from the luminous pages of _The Later Cosmos_. Now the reader,
scenting more learned discourse, may meditate upon skipping this
chapter; nay, will probably do so. Yet, to my thinking, he will act more
wisely in buckling down to it, seeing that it contains matter of moment
for the perfect understanding of the narrative proper. The studying of
guide-posts is not an amusing occupation, but it is infinitely less
tedious than to wander around all day in a fog and perhaps miss one's
destination altogether.

* * * * *

"