Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth CenturyDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century
Donnelly, Ignatius
Dystopias -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; Twentieth century -- Fiction
A sullen roar filled the air as this human cyclone moved onward,
leaving only wrecks behind it. Now it pauses at a house. The captain
consults his catalogue. "This is it," he cries; and doors and windows
give way before the thunderous mob; and then the scenes are terrible.
Men are flung headlong, alive, out of the windows to the ravenous
wretches below; now a dead body comes whirling down; then the
terrified inhabitants fly to the roofs, and are pursued from house to
house and butchered in sight of the delighted spectators. But when
the condemned man--the head of the house--is at last found, hidden
perhaps in some coal-hole or cellar, and is brought up, black with
dust, and wild with terror, his clothes half torn from his back; and
he is thrust forth, out of door or window, into the claws of the wild
beasts, the very heavens ring with acclamations of delight; and happy
is the man who can reach over his fellows and know that he has struck
the victim.
Then up and away for another vengeance. Before them is solitude;
shops and stores and residences are closed and barricaded; in the
distance teams are seen flying and men scurrying to shelter; and
through crevices in shutters the horrified people peer at the mob, as
at an invasion of barbarians.
Behind them are dust, confusion, dead bodies, hammered and beaten out
of all semblance of humanity; and, worse than all, the criminal
classes--that wretched and inexplicable residuum, who have no
grievance against the world except their own existence--the base, the
cowardly, the cruel, the sneaking, the inhuman, the horrible! These
flock like jackals in the track of the lions. They rob the dead
bodies; they break into houses; they kill if they are resisted; they
fill their pockets. Their joy is unbounded. Elysium has descended
upon earth for them this day. Pickpockets, sneak-thieves,
confidence-men, burglars, robbers, assassins, the refuse and
outpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all are here. And women,
too--or creatures that pass for such--having the bodies of women and
the habits of ruffians;--harpies--all claws and teeth and
greed--bold--desperate--shameless--incapable of good. They, too, are
here. They dart hither and thither; they swarm--they dance--they
howl--they chatter--they quarrel and battle, like carrion-vultures,
over the spoils.
Civilization is gone, and all the devils are loose! No more courts,
nor judges, nor constables, nor prisons! That which it took the world
ten thousand years to create has gone in an hour.
And still the thunderous cyclones move on through a hundred streets.
Occasionally a house is fired; but this is not part of the programme,
for they have decided to keep all these fine residences for
themselves! They will be rich. They will do no more work. The rich
man's daughters shall be their handmaidens; they will wear his purple
and fine linen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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