You ain't such a fool as to think
that is new,--are you?

"Put in my telegraph project. Central station. Cables with insulated
wires running to it from different quarters of the city. These form the
centripetal system. From central station, wires to all the livery
stables, messenger stands, provision shops, etc., etc. These form the
centrifugal system. Any house may have a wire in the nearest cable at
small cost.

"_Do you want to be remembered after the continents have gone under, and
come up again, and dried, and bred new races? Have your name stamped on
all your plates and cups and saucers. Nothing of you or yours will last
like those. I never sit down at my table without looking at the china
service, and saying, 'Here are my monuments. That butter-dish is my urn.
This soup-plate is my memorial tablet.'--No need of a skeleton at my
banquets! I feed from my tombstone and read my epitaph at the bottom, of
every teacup._--Good."

* * * * *

He fell into a revery as he finished reading this last sentence. He
thought of the dim and dread future,--all the changes that it would
bring to him, to all the living, to the face of the globe, to the order
of earthly things. He saw men of a new race, alien to all that had ever
lived, excavating with strange, vast engines the old ocean-bed, now
become habitable land. And as the great scoops turned out the earth they
had fetched up from the unexplored depths, a relic of a former simple
civilization revealed the fact that here a tribe of human beings had
lived and perished.--Only the coffee-cup he had in his hand half an hour
ago.--Where would he be then? and Mrs. Hopkins, and Gifted, and Susan,
and everybody? and President Buchanan? and the Boston State-House? and
Broadway?--O Lord, Lord, Lord! And the sun perceptibly smaller,
according to the astronomers, and the earth cooled down a number of
degrees, and inconceivable arts practised by men of a type yet undreamed
of, and all the fighting creeds merged in one great universal--

A knock at his door interrupted his revery. Miss Susan Posey informed
him that a gentleman was waiting below who wished to see him.

"Show him up to my study, Susan Posey, if you please," said Master
Gridley.

Mr. Penhallow presented himself at Mr. Gridley's door, with a
countenance expressive of a very high state of excitement.

"You have heard the news, Mr. Gridley, I suppose?"

"What news, Mr. Penhallow?"

"First