Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/197

 THE ONE PILL-BOX

Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, the sun seemed to blaze with sevenfold heat; the sky glowed like steel in the process of blistering; a haze yellow as the radiance above a crucible gilded the streets; the great plants swooned in the garden—fainting flowers laid their heads on the dry clay; the winds were dead; the Yellow Plague filled the city with invisible exhalations of death. A silence as of cemeteries weighed down upon the place; commerce slept a wasting slumber; the iron muscles and brazen bones of wealth machinery relaxed, and limgs of steel ceased their panting; the ships had spread their white wings and flown; the wharves were desolate; the cotton-presses ceased their mighty mastication, and no longer uttered their titanic sighs. The English mill-master had remained at