You don't like the way the tale keeps extending itself; you have the feeling it could continue indefinitely. You grab a fistful of pages and turn them all at once to:
"The End of the World as Seen from the Caboose of the Last Departing Train"
Tuesday had come late that week, and it came all the more violently for having to follow Wednesday; it came with girdles loosened and dirndls undone. It was the last Tuesday of the month and it looked to be the last Tuesday for a good long time, such was the tumult of its coming. It looked as though a whole monthful of Tuesdays had elbowed their way into the day, between a bitter yellow sunrise that smelled of almonds and a bloody sunset that curtained the west like a crash of rotten tomatoes. It was the Tuesday between Wednesday and Thursday, with all that that entailed.
The dew had scarcely been wrung from the dawn when a great smoky chasm opened between those who dared and those who preferred. The Profundities exited their hotel a little after ten while newspapermen chucked rocks. It was too late for most, however, and a thin pale smile appeared in a hovering cloudbank, momentarily, then dissipated.
Noon-time was a great-dancing bear, and a hundred Boy Scouts, each bearing a different colored regret, caught the mood in oils. One elderly woman was overheard to remark that, while in her day the crow had been a harbinger of death, more often than not she found it to be a harbinger of bank presidents; her companion opened his umbrella and released a sea-squall. At four o'clock precisely a squad of little men, entire and from the Post, watched attentively as the last train of the afternoon arrived, disgorging a foreigner bearing guarantees of safe internment. All died within minutes.
Dusk fell abruptly, to the embarrassment of those caught out-of-doors. At Bracton House the residents moved and mooed like cattle of uncertain temper; several, to their chagrin, actually gave milk. But although a Chinese Emperor once observed that an entire universe passes away in the drop of a butterfly's wings, not one saw fit to stay up and observe. Most retired early, or stayed up until midnight with cigars and poker.
* * * * *
The hell--?
To put aside the book and keep investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"
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