Jackson Gregory

“ Nowhere did a rock chimney send up its smoke to stain the clear sky; the street was empty, grown up with grass and weeds and even young trees; no child's voice in laughter or man or woman’s voice calling; no dog's bark to vibrate through the stillness which was absolute; no sound of ax on wood or of hammer or of horses’ hoofs; no stirring object upon the steps which were rotting away, nor at door or window.
No sign of life, though he turned this way and that, searching. Everywhere the wilderness was pushing in again where once man had come, vanquishing it. ”

“ At every open door and window he looked in eagerly, noting less the sagging panels and broken shutters than the dark interiors. Many roofs had fallen, many walls were down, many buildings were but rectangular heaps of ruins grown over grass. But other houses, builded solidly of great logs, with sturdy steep roofs, stood defiantly.
“There was a time when hundreds of men lived here,” he thought as he hastened on. “Men and women, maybe, and perhaps children! Why did they go like this? Even a town may die like a man, even its name be forgotten in a generation or two.” ”

“ By daylight, gloom haunted the tenantless buildings; by night, here would be melancholia’s own demesne. Nowhere else in the world does one find that terrible sadness which spreads its somber wings in the abode of man long given over to the wild to be a lair for its soft-footed children. ”