 | DREADFUL DEVELOPMENTS. Saratoga in 1901 |  |
DREADFUL DEVELOPMENTS.
Everybody was startled.
“Turn the crank again?” said Professor Chandler to Senator
Robertson, who, with Professor Agassiz, had charge of the
battery.
The crank turned. Lightning streaked from the turning
wheel, and flashed luridly around the tubing. Losing their
specific gravity, and floating on the surface were old hammers,
horseshoes, tin pans, kerosene lamps, coal scuttles, basins of soap
grease, brass kettles, case knives, German-silver spoons, lizards'
teeth, fish hooks, photograph materials, gimlets, and petrified
human skeletons, which sailed on the water like Banquo's
ghost. All day these dreadful revelations have been developing
themselves. Night has put an end to the Professor's labors, and
the town reposes only to resort to the spring again at daylight.
Colonel Johnson has fled, a voluntary exile, to Moon Lake; the
Chesterfieldian Hathorn kicks his faithful dog Brave, looks
mournfully into his new Hathorn spring, and trembles at the
revelations which may ruin him in the morning.
William Leland is a raving maniac, and Warren's giant
intellect “totters to its fall,” as he sings and whistles a listless
air, unmindful of the coaches loaded with new guests for Congress
Hall. Charles Leland and the giddy guests of the Clarendon
have gone into mourning, closed the blinds of the aristocratic
boarding-house on the hill, and the balcony where the young
gentlemen were wont to hold the hands of sweethearts, and
whisper in gentle ears the lover's siren tale of love and hope, is a
deserted waste. A funeral pall has fallen over this once happy
village. Beautiful is the sublime resignation of the people.
“I knew it must come!” said the heroic Marvin, the hot-scalding
tears rolling down his manly cheek: “I knew this devilish
modern science would find us out some time;” and then he went
and sat down among the crumbling butments of the old United
States—a ruined man!
The poor villagers seem grief stricken at the horrible
revelation. Young men and maidens stand
sobbing upon the corners of the deserted streets,
while old gray-headed fathers sit buried in silent
grief. No word of hope can break the solemn stillness
of despair.
J. Morrissey walks like a deserted sentinel up and down by
his once happy club-house, with its festive board deserted, and its
laughter and its songs turned to grief. His eagle eye is dimmed
with tears, and turns not upon his once happy guests, but down
upon the floors of deserted halls. We know not what another
day may bring forth.
I will hasten to telegraph the result to the Commercial in the
morning. Other newspapers are evidently bribed, and Captain
Ritchie as yet makes no allusion to the astounding facts in the
Daily Saratogian. The rest to-morrow.
| DREADFUL DEVELOPMENTS. Saratoga in 1901 | |