binds them down to brick, I mean. This decrease of
responsibility must make them as light-hearted as the
loss of gravitation makes them light-bodied.

On which point I ask for a moment's attention. And
as these sheets leave my hand, an illustration turns up
which well serves me. It is the 23d of October.
Yesterday morning all wakeful women in New England were
sure there was some one under the bed. This is a certain
sign of an earthquake. And when we read the evening
newspapers, we were made sure there had been an
earthquake. What blessings the newspapers are,--and how
much information they give us! Well, they said it was
not very severe, here, but perhaps it was more severe
elsewhere; hopes really arising in the editorial mind
that in some Caraccas or Lisbon all churches and the
cathedral might have fallen. I did not hope for that.
But I did have just the faintest feeling that IF--if
if--it should prove that the world had blown up into six
or eight pieces, and they had gone off into separate
orbits, life would be vastly easier for all of us, on
whichever bit we happened to be.

That thing has happened, they say, once. Whenever
the big planet between Mars and Jupiter blew up, and
divided himself into one hundred and two or more
asteroids, the people on each one only knew there had
been an earthquake when and after they read their morning
journals. And then, all that they knew at first was that
telegraphic communication had ceased beyond--say two