[He is now completely intoxicated, with tiny tracks of bloody tears dotting his white linen suit:]

To complete this picture, we may fancy to ourselves, a Boston, a New York, a Philadelphia and a Baltimore growing up in a day, as it were, both in Oregon and California, crowded with a vast population, and affording all the enjoyments and luxuries, of civilized life.

[The fiddler commences his final tune, "Elegy," as the man in a white linen suit, now dabbed red here and there, continues to fall apart physically for any number of reasons.]

And to this we may add, numerous churches, magnificent edifices, spacious colleges, and stupendous monuments and observatories, all of Grecian architecture, rearing their majestic heads, high in the aerial region, amid those towering pyramids of perpetual snow, looking down upon all the busy, bustling scenes, of tumultuous civilization, amid the eternal verdure of perennial spring. And in fine, we are also led to contemplate the time, as fast approaching, when the supreme darkness of ignorance, superstition, and despotism, which now, so entirely pervade many portions of those remote regions, will have fled forever, before the march of civilization, and the blazing light, of civil and religious liberty; when genuine republicanism, and unsophisticated democracy, shall be reared up, and tower aloft, even upon the now wild shores, of the great Pacific; where they shall forever stand forth, as enduring monuments, to the increasing wisdom of man, and the infinite kindness and protection, of an all-wise, and overruling Providence.

[As the music plays, Lansford Warren Hastings loses consciousness and dies, aged 51.

This remains unnoticed for a while.]

THE END

‡