IN MAMMOTH CAVE 243 



along, one seemed to come very near to the youth 

 of the century, almost to overtake it. 



At a point in one of the great avenues, if you stop 

 and listen, you hear a slow, solemn ticking like a 

 great clock in a deserted hall; you hear the slight 

 echo as it fathoms and sets off the silence. It is 

 called the clock, and is caused by a single large drop 

 of water falling every second into a little pool. A 

 ghostly kind of clock there in the darkness, that is 

 never wound up and that never runs down. It 

 seemed like a mockery where time is not, and change 

 does not come — the clock of the dead. This som- 

 bre and mortuary cast of one's thoughts seems so 

 natural in the great cave, that I could well under- 

 stand the emotions of a lady who visited the cave 

 with a party a few days before I was there. She 

 went forward very reluctantly from the first; the 

 silence and the darkness of the huge mausoleum 

 evidently impressed her imagination, so that when 

 she got to the spot where the guide points out the 

 " Giant's Coffin," a huge, fallen rock, which in the 

 dim light takes exactly the form of an enormous 

 coffin, her fear quite overcame her, and she begged 

 piteously to be taken back. Timid, highly imagi- 

 native people, especially women, are quite sure to 

 have a sense of fear in this strange underground 

 world. The guide told me of a lady in one of the 

 parties he was conducting through, who wanted to 

 linger behind a little all alone; he suffered her to 

 do so, but presently heard a piercing scream. Bush- 

 ing back, he found her lying prone upon the ground 



