The account which the newspaper made shift to give was but a bald, disjointed recital of the superficial aspect of events to one whose memory could so nearly reproduce the vivid fact; and where memory and experience failed him, his imagination, conversant with the status depicted, could paint the scene with all the tints of actuality. A recent steamboat accident on the great Mississippi River had resulted in much loss of life. The words, as Euphemia droned them, still holding the newspaper with both arms outstretched, brought back to one of her listeners the sensation of forging tremulously along in midstream at nightfall, the shimmer of the shaking chandeliers of the great flimsy floating palace, the white interior of the ladies’ cabin, with the “china finish” of the painted and paneled walls, its velvet carpet and furniture, its grand piano. He heard anew the throb of the engines, and the rush of water from the great revolving wheels; he had the sense, too, of the immensity of the vast river, gleaming with twinkling points of light close at hand, where the waves caught the glitter from the illuminated craft, and tossed it from one to another as the surges of the displaced water broke about the hull; further away could be seen the swift current hurrying on, a different dusky tint from the darkness; and still further, where the limits of vision were reached, one had even yet some subtle realization of that unceasing irresistible flow, although unseen and unheard. He remembered leaning over the guards and idly watching a number of mules on the deck below, crowded so thickly that they seemed only a dark restlessly stirring mass, until at some landing, when they were excited by the clamors of the roustabouts loading on more cotton, the pallid glare of the electric light rendered distinguishable the tossing snorting heads and wild dilated eyes. An ill-starred cargo! The frantic struggles of this animated mass caused much loss of human life; many a bold swimmer might have gained the land but for the uncontrolled plunging of those heavy hoofs. And there was no lack of light to reveal the full horrors of the fate: those huge piles of bales of blazing cotton illumined the river for twenty miles. How unprescient, how strangely stolid, the human organism, the phlegmatic mind, the insensate soul, that no nerve, no faint tremor of fear or forecast, no vague presentiment, heralded the moment when every condition of life was reversed!