Across the face of one of the buildings there was an enormous sign: "Sheridan Automatic Pump Co., Inc." Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and adding their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses of a thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots and nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from one another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch some night when the right wind blew.

They were only waiting for that wind and a cigarette, and then they would all be gone together--a pinch of incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there a forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying.

Some people said it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure that asphalt and "improving" the streets did it; but Bigness was in too Big a hurry to bother much about trees.

He had telegraph-poles and telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the thousand to take their places.

So he let the trees die and put up his poles.