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The current on the Government wire was broken at 10:40. Delicate tests show that the wire is now grounded. The dire conclusion of experts here is that the train ran from some point west of Minidoka from about 6:15 to 10:40 without human control, and then met with an accident. At the rate at which it was moving the train must have reached Shoshone. Terrible excitement here.

My keen sense detected in the newspaper itself certain infallible little signs that the news had disturbed the precision and routine of the office. Lines of type were in the wrong place, and typographical errors made it difficult to get the exact sense. Dispatch after dispatch, all bearing the same import of panic, was huddled into the column. From St. Louis the announcement was:

An unprecedented excitement here over the news from Cheyenne. The authorities appear to have lost their heads, and are unable to preserve order. Eastward-bound trains are carrying away people at a mob rate. We are in the midst of chaos.

From Chicago the intelligence was similarly appalling. “A panic prevails here,” said the dispatch. “Impelled by a senseless apprehension of disaster, people have lost their reason. The Mayor has just issued a call upon the best citizens to assist him in preserving order.”

It required no news expert to see that all the issues of life were temporarily suspended by the tremendous and growing interest in this stupendous mystery. Channels of news worn smooth by the placid streams of everyday platitudes began to show the roll of this new freshet. A dispatch from Washington was unintentionally significant. It read like this: “The only explanation forwarded by Colonel Sandford of the abandonment of the Pike’s Peak signal station by himself and party is that of a coward. He says the wind pressure indicated that the place would speedily become untenable.”

I turned over the sheet in which these disheartening facts were presented and looked at the editorial page. There was a double-leaded leader, evidently written late at night, and its conclusions were more gruesome than the facts, for while the facts could be interpreted in various ways according to the reader’s condition of mind, there was no mistaking the official tone of the editor whose business it was to weigh and estimate the public value of news. It seemed to me that this umpire to whom we instinctively looked for opinions had thrown up the sponge, so to speak. Let me recall his words as they were impressed upon me that morning:

That a grave crisis has arrived in the conditions of life on this planet, it would be folly and is impossible any longer to deny. It is not our province nor is it within our power to offer any solution of the stupendous mystery that is now enveloping a part of our continent. It is only imperative upon us, as brave agents in the dispensing of truth, to say, with all the candor that we can summon, that the effort of the Government to open communication with the vast region west of what must now be known as the Meridian of Silence has dismally failed, and it is the conviction of the maturest judgment, based upon all the facts of the attempt that are obtainable, that it failed because the explorers themselves ceased to exist when they had passed a certain pretty well-defined line which we now know extends north and south from Helena in Montana to 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.”