Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/277

 but with a strange refreshment in their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marvelling and questioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulous laughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside, the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of their awakening horses. . ..

Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they set about to produce the paper.

Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia of their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprise that had suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational. They worked amidst questionings and yet light-heartedly. At every stage there must have been interruptions for discussion. The paper only got down to Menton five days late.

4

Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a certain prosaic person, a grocer named Wiggins, and how he passed through the Change. I heard this man's story in the post-office at Menton, when, in the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to telegraph