gentleman in green spectacles. "The world is utterly ruined, and
there is nothing to live for any longer. The business of my life is
snatched from me. Not a volume to be had for love or money!"

"This," remarked the sedate observer beside me, "is a bookworm,--one
of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you
see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward
fountain of ideas; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is
abolished, I do not see what is to become of the poor fellow. Have
you no word of comfort for him?"

"My dear sir," said I to the desperate bookworm, "is not nature
better than a book? Is not the human heart deeper than any system
of philosophy? Is not life replete with more instruction than past
observers have found it possible to write down in maxims? Be of
good cheer. The great book of Time is still spread wide open before
us; and, if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal
truth."

"O, my books, my books, my precious printed books!" reiterated the
forlorn bookworm. "My only reality was a bound volume; and now they
will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!"

In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the ages was now
descending upon the blazing heap in the shape of a cloud of
pamphlets from the press of the New World. These likewise were
consumed in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the
first time since the days of Cadmus, free from the plague of
letters,--an enviable field for the authors of the next generation.