Yuma on the borders of Mexico.

I found myself standing by my breakfast table reading this. I had risen
unconsciously. My breakfast was unheeded. An ungovernable impulse to go
anywhere seized me. To sit still with this crushing uncertainty was
impossible. I found myself in a coupe. Where I got it I do not
distinctly remember. But I do remember that it was by means of an
extraordinary offer to the driver, who, like all his fellows, was
dashing through the streets at a headlong pace. And I also have a very
clear recollection of the strange nervous effect produced upon me by
seeing the people along the curbs on Broadway watching the flying
vehicles with a mute terror, as if the very recklessness of the drivers
afforded them a palpable distraction from the unintelligible weight of
their own fears. I speedily noticed that the stream of humanity on the
streets was tending down town, and almost immediately I understood that
it was heading, like myself, for the news centers. I could get no
farther than Chambers Street, owing to the block of people and vehicles,
and the driver rudely refused to take the risk of a jam. I looked at the
City Hall clock. It was only eight. My heart was beating rapidly, and I
knew enough of the effect of emotion on the cardiac system to understand
that it was caused by suspense. A thousand new terrors were in the air
of which the experience and the sagacity of man were ignorant. I forced
my way with the greatest difficulty across the park, which was full of
restless but strangely mute people, and got near enough to the newspaper
bulletins to read the painted lines. They were feverishly indicative of
the cross currents of excitement in the country, and were in short,
decisive sentences like this: "The President asked to appoint a day of
humiliation and prayer immediately. The Governor of Colorado, crazed by
the excitement, commits suicide. Mob rule in Chicago. Rioting in Denver.
Breakdown of the Alton & Chicago road. Unparalleled scenes at El Paso.
Fanaticism in New Orleans. The Christian pastors of this city will meet
at Cooper Union at ten o'clock, irrespective of sect. Panic in
Milwaukee."

Held by a numbing sort of fascination, I read these sentences over and
over. Across Printing House Square, on another bulletin, in big black
letters I saw the line, "It baffles the world. Has annihilation set in!"
There was something weird in the use of the pronoun IT. It seemed to be
man's last effort in l