icence of the
Ambersons--its passing, and the passing of the Ambersons themselves.
They had been slowly engulfed without knowing how to prevent it, and
almost without knowing what was happening to them. The family lot, in
the shabby older quarter, out at the cemetery, held most of them now;
and the name was swept altogether from the new city. But the new
great people who had taken their places--the Morgans and Akerses and
Sheridans--they would go, too. George saw that. They would pass, as the
Ambersons had passed, and though some of them might do better than
the Major and leave the letters that spelled a name on a hospital or a
street, it would be only a word and it would not stay forever. Nothing
stays or holds or keeps where there is growth, he somehow perceived
vaguely but truly. Great Caesar dead and turned to clay stopped no hole
to keep the wind away dead Caesar was nothing but a tiresome bit of
print in a book that schoolboys study for awhile and then forget. The
Ambersons had passed, and the new people would pass, and the new people
that came after them, and then the next new ones, and the next--and the
next--

He had begun to murmur, and the man on duty as night nurse for the ward
came and bent over him.

"Did you want something?"

"There's nothing in this family business," George told him
confidentially. "Even George Washington is only something in a book."

Eugene read a report of the accident in the next morning's paper. He was
on the train, having just left for New York, on business, and with less
leisure would probably have overlooked the obscure item:

LEGS BROKEN

G. A. Minafer, an employee of the Akers Chemical Co., was run down by
an automobile yesterday at the corner of Tennessee and Main and had
both legs broken. Minafer was to blame for the accident according to
patrolman F. A. Kax, who witnessed the affair. The automobile was a
small one driven by Herbert Cottleman of 9173 Noble Avenue who stated
that he was making less than 4 miles an hour. Minafer is said to belong
to a family formerly of considerable prominence in the city. He was
taken to the City Hospital where physicians stated later that he was
suffering from internal injuries besides the fracture of his legs but
might recover.

Eugene read the item twice, then tossed the paper upon the opposite
seat of his compartment, and sat looking out of the window. His feeling
toward Georgie was changed not a jot by his human pity for Georgie'