Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/14

2 of joy or sorrow, but the brilliant King of Day ascended his appointed path through the sky unheeding and careless of the petty affairs of men.

What would the men of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries think if they could rise from the dead and see us now? They boasted of their civilization, but what would they think of ours? Their brick-and-mortar London, with its fog and dirt and crowds of narrow, unwholesome streets, has been changed into a splendid city built of the most beautiful granite and marble. It extends for miles far out into the provinces, covering hills and valleys with its imposing squares and winding streets diversified by colossal public buildings and places of amusement. The whole is traversed by a network of rivers, lakes, and streams, and varied by numerous parks and gardens. Mists, fogs, cold rains, and other nuisances of the older civilization, have been abolished, for the pole of the earth has been tilted round so