“What of quarter-day?” inquired a landlord and a tenant simultaneously.
“We shall never see the moon again,” sobbed a pair of lovers.
“It is well this did not happen at night,” observed an optimist.
“Indeed?” questioned the director of a gas company.
“I told you the Last Day would come in our time,” said a preacher.
It was still long before the people realised that the trance of Time had paralysed his daughter Mutability as well. Every operation depending on her silent processes was arrested. The unborn could not come to life. The sick could not die. The human frame could not waste. Every one in the enjoyment of health and strength felt assured of the perpetual possession of these blessings, unless he should meet with accident or violent death. But all growth ceased, and all dissolution was stayed. Mothers looked with despair on infants who could never be weaned or learn to walk. Expectant heirs gazed with dismay on immortal fathers and uncles. The reigning beauties, the fashionable boxers and opera dancers were in the highest feather. Nor did the intellectual less rejoice, counting on endless life and unimpaired faculties, and vowing to extend human knowledge beyond the conceivable. The poor and the outcast, the sick and the maimed, the broken-hearted and the dying made, indeed, a dismal outcry, the sincerity of which was doubted by some persons.
As for our student, forgetting his faithful Vampire, he made his way to a young lady of great personal attractions, to whom he had been attached in former days. The sight of her beauty, and the thought that it would be everlasting, revived his passion. To convince her of the perpetuity of her charms, and establish a claim upon her gratitude, he cautiously revealed to her that he was the author of this blissful state of things, and that Time’s hair was actually in his possession.
“Oh, you dear good man!” she exclaimed, “how vastly I am obliged to you! Ferdinand will never forsake me now.”
“Ferdinand! Leonora, I thought you cared for me.”
“Oh!” she said, “you young men of science are so conceited!”