orth and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from
the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the
roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows
manufacture, and we follow the bundles.

Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling
into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their
way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy
out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of
these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing
parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great
running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings
of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few
hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling
papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men
and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study
fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters
waiting for father to finish--a million scattered people are
reading--reading headlong--or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if
some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface
of the land.

Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable
excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying nothing.

--From H. G. Wells "In the Days of the Comet."

[Illustration]

A VISIT TO SING SING.

By A MORALIST.

I was ennuye; the everlasting decency and respectability of my
surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people
doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of
reasons. And they were uninteresting.

"Oh," said I to myself, "these are the people of the ruts; they go that
way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be
some persons who do not conform. Where are they?"

Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that
monument of our civilization on the Hudson River, and why finally I
made up my mind to visit it.

I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human
interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me
entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district,
who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls