To-morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitations will find relief in the exercise of simple memories. I am burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so fearfully perished.
Dreams are no more.
To that last hour of all, there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow over your household. Remember that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative philosophy of the day. I need scarce tell you, my friend, that even when you left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire, as having reference to the orb of the earth alone. But in regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame.