They alone know that every vicissitude of the city's condition is traceable to that source--its sadness, its merriment, its carnivals and its lents, its health and its disease, its prosperity and the hideous plagues which at distant intervals kill one in ten of the population.

Is it not a pretty thought ?" "I do not understand you," said Kafka, wearily.
"It is a very practical idea," continued Keyork, amused with his own fancies, "and it will yet be carried out.

The great cities of the next century will each have a liver of brick and mortar and iron and machinery, a huge mechanical purifier.

You smile! Ah, my dear boy, truth and phantasm are very much the same to you! You are too young.

How can you be expected to care for the great problem of problems, for the mighty question of prolonging life ?" Keyork laughed again, with a meaning in his laughter which escaped his companion altogether.
"How can you be expected to care ?" he repeated.