For instance, some threw their marriage certificates into theflames, and declared themselves candidates for a higher, holier, andmore comprehensive union than that which had subsisted from thebirth of time, under the form of the connubial tie. Others hastened tothe vaults of banks, and to the coffers of the rich- all of which wereopen to the first comer, on this fated occasion- and brought entirebales of paper-money to enliven the blaze, and tons of coin to bemelted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said, universalbenevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currencyof the world. At this intelligence, the bankers, and speculators inthe stocks, grew pale; and a pickpocket, who had reaped a rich harvestamong the crowd, fell down in a deadly fainting-fit. A few men ofbusiness burnt their day-books and ledgers, the notes andobligations of their creditors, and all other evidences of debts dueto themselves; while perhaps a somewhat larger number satisfiedtheir zeal for reform with the sacrifice of any uncomfortablerecollection of their own indebtment. There was then a cry, that theperiod was arrived when the title-deeds of landed property should begiven to the flames, and the whole soil of the earth revert to thepublic, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted, and mostunequally distributed among individuals. Another party demanded thatall written constitutions, set forms of government, legislativeacts, statute-books, and everything else on which human inventionhad endeavored to stamp its arbitrary laws, should at once bedestroyed, leaving the consummated world as free as the man firstcreated.
Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard to thesepropositions, is beyond my knowledge; for, just then, some matterswere in progress that concerned my sympathies more nearly.
"See! see! what heaps of books and pamphlets!" cried a fellow,who did not seem to be a lover of literature. "Now we shall have aglorious blaze!""That's just the thing," said a modern philosopher. "Now we shallget rid of the weight of dead men's thought, which has hithertopressed so heavily on the living intellect that it has beenincompetent to any effectual self-exertion. Well done, my lads! Intothe fire with them! Now you are enlightening the world, indeed!""But what is to become of the Trade?" cried a frantic bookseller.
"Oh, by all means, let them accompany their merchandise," coollyobserved an author. "It will be a noble funeral pile!"The truth was, that the human race had now reached a stage ofprogress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ageshad ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity toallow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their poorachievements in the literary line. Accordingly, a thorough andsearching investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, hawkers'
stands, public and private libraries, and even the little book-shelfby the country fireside, and had brought the world's entire mass ofprinted paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the alreadymountain-bulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios,containing the labors of lexicographers, commentators, andencyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the embers with aleaden thump, smouldered away to ashes, like rotten wood. The small,richly gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumesof Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles,and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the samenation burnt red and blue, and threw an infernal light over thevisages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect ofparti-colored fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scentof brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel,generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton's works,in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into acoal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other materialof the pile. From Shakspeare there gushed a flame of such marvelloussplendor that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's meridianglory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were flungupon him did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance frombeneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blazingas fervidly as ever.
