lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the
dead ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I know
we discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall what
we said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and that
Verrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not like
him to read over my shoulder. . . .

The document before me must have helped us through the first
awkwardness of that meeting.

But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . .

It is easy to see the New Paper had been set up overnight, and then
large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not
know enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely what
happened. The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of
type having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There is
something very rough and ready about it all, and the new portions
print darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward the
left, where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine,
who knows something of the old typography, has suggested to me that
the machinery actually in use for the New Paper was damaged that
night, and that on the morning of the Change Banghurst borrowed a
neighboring office--perhaps in financial dependence upon him--to
print in.

The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts
of the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middle
leaves. Here we found set forth in a curious little four-column
oblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column with
scare headings beginning, "Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. The
Fate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More------"

These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it
was guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance.

It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and
reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch.

The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper
impressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that
framework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice of
a sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to the
prompt recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of
rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread,
to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been
accomplished in the day that elapsed b