It is not, however, of the celestial but of the terrestrial future that I
am permitted to speak.
For, as I intimated, these young cities of the west, only a half-century
old as cities--children by the side of Paris, London, Rome--are beginning
seriously to take thought of the morrow, not simply of multiplying their
numbers nor of sending their multitudes back to the country but of giving
them prospect and promise of a better, more comfortable, more wholesome
life, capable of a higher individual and collective development within the
city. For while cities have been preached against since the time when
Jonah cried against Nineveh, and while cities have perished and have been
buried, even as Nineveh, the generic city, the assembling of gregarious
men, continues and increases.
The census returns for 1910 for the American cities show, so far as I
noticed, scarcely a single loss of population in the last ten years
[Footnote: Cities with losses of population in the decade are Galveston,
Texas: 37,389 in 1900, 36,981 in 1910; Chelsea, Mass.
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