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“Patience, my poor girl!” said he, as he drew her back from the
fierce embrace of the destroying angel. “Be patient, and abide
Heaven’s will. So long as you possess a living soul, all may be
restored to its first freshness. These things of matter and
creations of human fantasy are fit for nothing but to be burned when
once they have had their day; but your day is eternity!”

“Yes,” said the wretched girl, whose frenzy seemed now to have sunk
down into deep despondency, “yes, and the sunshine is blotted out of
it!”

It was now rumored among the spectators that all the weapons and
munitions of war were to be thrown into the bonfire with the
exception of the world’s stock of gunpowder, which, as the safest
mode of disposing of it, had already been drowned in the sea. This
intelligence seemed to awaken great diversity of opinion. The
hopeful philanthropist esteemed it a token that the millennium was
already come; while persons of another stamp, in whose view mankind
was a breed of bulldogs, prophesied that all the old stoutness,
fervor, nobleness, generosity, and magnanimity of the race would
disappear,–these qualities, as they affirmed, requiring blood for
their nourishment. They comforted themselves, however, in the belief
that the proposed abolition of war was impracticable for any length
of time together.

Be that as it might, numberless great guns, whose thunder had long
been the voice of battle,–the artillery of the Armada, the
battering trains of Marlborough, and the adverse cannon of Napoleon
and Wellington,–were trundled into the midst of the fire. By the
continual addition of dry combustibles, it had now waxed so intense
that neither brass nor iron could withstand it. It was wonderful to
behold how these terrible instruments of slaughter melted away like
playthings of wax. Then the armies of the earth wheeled around the
mighty furnace, with their military music playing triumphant
marches,–and flung in their muskets and swords. The standard-
bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at their banners, all
tattered with shot-holes and inscribed with the names of victorious
fields; and, giving them a last flourish on the breeze, they lowered
them into the flame, which snatched them upward in its rush towards
the clouds. This ceremony being over, the world was left without a
single weapon in its hands, except possibly a few old king’s arms
and rusty swords and other trophies of the Revolution in some of our
State armories. And now the drums were beaten and the trumpets
brayed all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of universal
and eternal peace and the announcement that glory was no longer to
be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be the contention of
the human race to work out the greatest mutual good, and that
beneficence, in the future annals of the earth, would claim the
praise of valor. The blessed tidings were accordingly promulgated,
and caused infinite rejoicings among those who had stood aghast at
the horror and absurdity of war.

But I saw a grim smile pass over the seared visage of a stately
old commander,–by his war-worn figure and rich military dress, he
might have been one of Napoleon’s famous marshals,–who, with the
rest of the world’s soldiery, had just flung away the sword that had
been familiar to his right hand for half a century.

“Ay! ay!” grumbled he. “Let them proclaim what they please; but,
in the end, we shall find that all this foolery has only made more
work for the armorers and cannon-founders.”