“Some wild, senseless rumours were abroad in London last night, as to the sudden, mysterious disappearance of numbers of the ultra religious persons of London, and elsewhere. Some people talked wildly of the end of the world. We therefore despatched special commissioners, to ascertain what truth there was in all this.
Our representative returned an hour and a half later, after having visited all the chief places of amusement and principal restaurants. But everywhere managers told the same story, ‘there has been no signs of the end of the world in our place. We are fuller than ever.’
The genial manager of the —— Theatre, assured our Representative, that no later than last Sunday morning, he heard it repeated at his Church, that ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.’ So that, for the life of him, he could not conceive any one being such a fool as to talk of the end of the world.”
But the note of the “Courier’s” clarion call had no uncertain sound. Besides all that we have already seen written in the office by the translated Tom Hammond, and afterwards by Ralph Bastin, the latter had added to his postscript, another. It was a solemn, a pathetic word, and ran as follows:
“Our sheets must go to press in a few moments, if the “Courier” is to be in the hands of its readers at the usual hour. But before we print, we feel compelled to add a word or two more to what we wrote two hours ago.
“During the last two hours, we have made many discoveries, not the least of which, from the personal standpoint, is the fact, that the nearest and dearest being to our own heart and life, one whose life and thought, of late, has been strangely taken up by the Christ of God, is missing. She has shared in the glory and joy of the wondrous, mysterious, and—to most of us, to all of us surely who are left—unexpected translation.
“We have no wish or intention to parade our own personal griefs before our readers, but dare to say that no journalist ever worked with a more broken, crushed sense of life, than did we during the two hours we afterwards spent in searching London for facts.
“One curious fact which we speedily discovered, was, that no one had been taken in this wondrous translation, from any of the Theatres or music-halls. In the old days—four hours ago, seems, to look back to, like four centuries—before this awfully solemn event, discussions arose, periodically, in certain religious and semi-religious journals, as to whether true Christians could attend the theatre and music-hall.”
“The fact that no one appears to have been translated from any of these London houses of amusement, answers, we think, that question, as it has never been answered before.”