One called his father, another his son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other.

Many in their despair begged that death would come and end their distress.
"Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed that this night was the last, the eternal night which should engulf the universe! "Even so it seemed to me--and I consoled myself for the coming death with the reflection: BEHOLD, THE WORLD IS PASSING AWAY!" * * * * * * * * After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame.

Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name.

Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things?
A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell wrong)--no history, no tradition, no poetry--nothing that can give it even a passing interest.

What may be left of General Grant's great name forty centuries hence?
This--in the Encyclopedia for A.D.