contractors' stores; articles of furniture with casters on them, a sofa that would roll, a davenport, a baby's bed—all such vehicles were piled high with most precious personal possessions, hastily and often absurdly selected, and trundled frantically along the pavement. The gas plant blew up with a mighty roar that knocked houses flat, people flat; but the people rose and stumbled on, their pathway lighted by the flames that burned a block or two away.
Mothers wept, babies cried, fathers scolded; boys shouted one to another, girls giggled hysterically; everybody was frantic, everybody was exhausted but everybody kept going, for the tongues of flame licked hungrily. The red monster had roared down the main streets; it leaped from house to house, from cottage to cottage. The smoke hung in the air, a huge black pall, a few hundred yards above the town, making a somber reflector for the flames, illuminations that revealed men and women as insects—crawling, puny, helpless entities, struggling against the ultimate.
It was one wide stage, but many dramas were going forward upon it at once—comedies some of them, tragedies some—as, for instance: Adolph Salzberg was moving his goods from out his rented cottage. In the presence of what was happening all Salzberg's philosophies fell away from him. He was a mere homeless insect as other human beings were.
From somewhere he had obtained possession of a bony horse and a rickety wagon. Into this, aided by his wife, he was madly hurrying the few little sticks of furniture that were his and the two children that God had given and for whom at times he had been none too grateful. Adolph was very excited, very human, very
