and physique. But for the rest of us! The still
energetic men, and the women that have been cankered with the tedium
vitae, and have the brains and brawn to work. It will be the Fifties all
over again--not only something more than a bare living in prospect, but
a constant, exciting, interest in life. I saw a good many men, just
after the earthquake, looking as if they had believed the end of the
world had come, but they braced up directly the city was threatened by
something they could pit themselves against. Every man worth his salt is
fighting fire, rescuing the helpless, dragging mattresses out to the
hills and Park, and helping the women down here save their belongings.
All with automobiles and carriages are helping the authorities and
hospitals. Political factions and personal enemies are working side by
side, particularly down on the fire line. Even the mayor has won a day's
respect from his fellow-citizens, although I'm told he's terribly torn
between the Committee of Fifty and the military authorities on the one
hand, who want to blow up a wide zone, and the property-holders who
won't have their precious possessions sacrificed when the wind may
change any minute. Meanwhile the fire has a headway that will give it
the best part of the city. I never felt so alive in my life; so vividly
in the present. Can you remember the name of a book you have read, that
there is any world outside these seven square miles?"

"Yesterday is a mere dream and to-morrow is only a bare possibility! The
Fifties! I feel as if we were at the beginning of things on another
planet. I shall never trouble my head with problems or psychology again.
We are mere dancing midgets on the scalp of stupendous forces that we do
not even dimly apprehend. Earth lets us play until her patience is
exhausted with our pretentions as mere human beings, at our insane
delusion that the intellectual are not only the equal but the superior
of the physical forces; and then she merely shakes herself, and the
wisest is as helpless as the idiot, the prince even worse off than the
pauper because he has a bigger house to run out of. They all dance to
her tune like so many wooden marionettes. Hofer is no better off than
his blacksmith--whose savings are probably in the fireproof vault of
some bank, while I happen to know that more than one millionaire has not
insured his Class A buildings, thinking the expense unnecessary. No
wonder you have a sense of freedom. So have