one such
car. A man and a woman lay back dead in the seats, and on the pavement
near it were two more women and a child. Strange and terrible sights
there were on every hand. People slipped by silently, furtively, like
ghosts--white-faced women carrying infants in their arms; fathers
leading children by the hand; singly, and in couples, and in
families--all fleeing out of the city of death. Some carried supplies
of food, others blankets and valuables, and there were many who carried
nothing.

"There was a grocery store--a place where food was sold. The man to whom
it belonged--I knew him well--a quiet, sober, but stupid and obstinate
fellow, was defending it. The windows and doors had been broken in, but
he, inside, hiding behind a counter, was discharging his pistol at a
number of men on the sidewalk who were breaking in. In the entrance were
several bodies--of men, I decided, whom he had killed earlier in the
day. Even as I looked on from a distance, I saw one of the robbers break
the windows of the adjoining store, a place where shoes were sold,
and deliberately set fire to it. I did not go to the groceryman's
assistance. The time for such acts had already passed. Civilization was
crumbling, and it was each for himself."

IV

I WENT away hastily, down a cross-street, and at the first corner I saw
another tragedy. Two men of the working class had caught a man and a
woman with two children, and were robbing them. I knew the man by sight,
though I had never been introduced to him. He was a poet whose verses I
had long admired. Yet I did not go to his help, for at the moment I came
upon the scene there was a pistol shot, and I saw him sinking to the
ground. The woman screamed, and she was felled with a fist-blow by one
of the brutes. I cried out threateningly, whereupon they discharged
their pistols at me and I ran away around the corner. Here I was blocked
by an advancing conflagration. The buildings on both sides were burning,
and the street was filled with smoke and flame. From somewhere in that
murk came a woman's voice calling shrilly for help. But I did not go to
her. A man's heart turned to iron amid such scenes, and one heard all
too many appeals for help.

"Returning to the corner, I found the two robbers were gone. The poet
and his wife lay dead on the pavement. It was a shocking sight. The two
children had vanished--whither I could not tell. And I knew, now, why
it was that the fleeing persons I enc