sked Swift in surprise.

Mr. Statis Ticks raised his head proudly.

"If the _Planet_ can get on without me, let it!"

"But your family?" continued Swift, somewhat dazed. Who had suspected
this animated reference library of such enterprise?

"I sent messenger number thirty-seven to them," he answered with a sigh,
as if he were bored by such trifles.

Then considering this topic exhausted, Mr. Ticks took out his notebook
and looked absently out of the window; now and then he jotted down a few
abstruse figures. He was engrossed in calculating the farm acreage
adjacent to the railroad track between New York and Albany.

When they drew nearer to the region of the catastrophe the papers gave
more lurid accounts of it. These were purchased and read with avidity by
those on board the flying express. Groups centred in the cars talked
only of one thing. Reporters now joined the train at each prominent
city.

As the train approached the stricken territory it became crammed to
suffocation. It crept at a funeral pace. People fought at each station
for seats. The train split into sections on account of the added cars,
filled with mourners, with rescuers, with sight-seers, with villains.

Swift now took to himself a certain measure of authority. Was he not the
experienced representative of the greatest daily in America? But no one
noticed Mr. Statis Ticks, who silently blinked at the excited crowds and
then jotted down his estimates of them.

On the afternoon of the fourth day Swift bounded from the front platform
of the baggage car, the first to leave the train, and looked with a
professional eye about him. The scene that met his quick gaze was
unprecedented. Clamoring, gesticulating, shrieking, crying men and women
were rushing here and there in frenzy. Here was a group of women wailing
for their husbands, imprisoned or dead--and who knew which?--within that
awful circle. There a man looked, vacantly, with trembling lips, from
group to group, hunting for the wife snatched from him. Here was a rude
fellow peddling half a bushel of potatoes from a rickety farm wagon.
There a woman, hungry and desperate, was aimlessly dragging an orphan
child about. Yonder a confidence man was set upon and beaten by
infuriated victims. In the midst of a jostling, eager, credulous mob was
a man who fancied he had some real news to tell.

Now and then, as if by mutual consent, these people lifted up their
heads towards the Great Buzzard mounta