Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers | Page 2

not rare, in which a
single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and landmarks of
a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster than the flying

showers upon the mountain-side, faster 'than a musician scatters
sounds;' in which 'it was' and 'it is not' are words of the self-same
tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at noon beheld
all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour looks out upon a
total wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition of any fugitive
memorial that there ever had been a vessel to be wrecked, or a wreck to
be obliterated.
These cases, though here spoken of rhetorically, are of daily occurrence;
and, though they may seem few by comparison with the infinite
millions of the species, they are many indeed, if they be reckoned
absolutely for themselves; and throughout the limits of a whole nation,
not a day passes over us but many families are robbed of their heads, or
even swallowed up in ruin themselves, or their course turned out of the
sunny beams into a dark wilderness. Shipwrecks and nightly
conflagrations are sometimes, and especially among some nations,
wholesale calamities; battles yet more so; earthquakes, the famine, the
pestilence, though rarer, are visitations yet wider in their desolation.
Sickness and commercial ill-luck, if narrower, are more frequent
scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its train, comes the
sickness of the brain--lunacy--which, visiting nearly one thousand in
every million, must, in every populous nation, make many ruins in each
particular day. 'Babylon in ruins,' says a great author, 'is not so sad a
sight as a human soul overthrown by lunacy.' But there is a sadder even
than that,--the sight of a family-ruin wrought by crime is even more
appalling. Forgery, breaches of trust, embezzlement, of private or
public funds--(a crime sadly on the increase since the example of
Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by
him)--these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their
final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling
catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation, or
wherever property and the modes of property are much developed,
constitute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public
justice. Any of these is sufficient to make shipwreck of all peace and
comfort for a family; and often, indeed, it happens that the desolation is
accomplished within the course of one revolving sun; often the whole
dire catastrophe, together with its total consequences, is both
accomplished and made known to those whom it chiefly concerns

within one and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut of social life,
moving onwards with its everlasting thunders, pauses not for a moment
to spare--to pity--to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impassive
as the marble in the quarry--caring not for whom it destroys, for the
how many, or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few.
The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, the more
it multiplies and extends its victims, the more it conceals them; and for
the very same reason: just as in the Roman amphitheatres, when they
grew to the magnitude of mighty cities, (in some instances
accommodating four hundred thousand spectators, in many a fifth part
of that amount,) births and deaths became ordinary events, which, in a
small modern theatre, are rare and memorable; and exactly as these
prodigious accidents multiplied, pari passu, they were disregarded and
easily concealed: for curiosity was no longer excited; the sensation
attached to them was little or none.
From these terrific tragedies, which, like monsoons or tornadoes,
accomplish the work of years in an hour, not merely an impressive
lesson is derived, sometimes, perhaps, a warning, but also (and this is
of universal application) some consolation. Whatever may have been
the misfortunes or the sorrows of a man's life, he is still privileged to
regard himself and his friends as amongst the fortunate by comparison,
in so far as he has escaped these wholesale storms, either as an actor in
producing them, or a contributor to their violence--or even more
innocently, (though oftentimes not less miserably)--as a participator in
the instant ruin, or in the long arrears of suffering which they entail.
The following story falls within the class of hasty tragedies, and sudden
desolations here described. The reader is assured that every incident is
strictly true: nothing, in that respect, has been altered; nor, indeed,
anywhere except in the conversations, of which, though the results and
general outline are known, the separate details have necessarily been
lost under the agitating circumstances which produced them. It has
been judged right and delicate to conceal the name of the great city, and
therefore of the