The Scarlet Plague

n being thus called upon. He

ory was in great demand. But in t

the funny stuff and talk sensible. What's inter

d and won't talk at all. Skip the funny places

y maundering about the disrespect for elders and the reversion to cru

ale b

the world in those days. San Fra

lions?" Edwi

ooked at

rains as Edwin has fingers and thumbs. That makes what I call one hundred. Remember that word-one hundred. Now I put this pebble in Hare-Lip's hand. It stands for ten grains of sand, or ten tens of fingers, or one hundred fingers. I put in ten pebbles. They stand for a thousand fingers. I take a mussel-shell, and it stands for ten pebbles, or one hundred grains of sand, or one thousand fingers...." And so on, laboriously, and with much reitera

lion people in San F

h the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back again they ranged

folks, Granser," Ed

those people came out on this very beach-more people than there are grains of sand. More-more-more. And San Francisco was a noble city. And across the bay-where we camped last year, even more peop

up and down from Edwin's fin

year 1800, there were one hundred and seventy millions in Europe alone. One hundred years later-a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo-one hundred years later, at 1900, there were five hundred millions in Europe-five grains of sand, Hoo-Hoo, and this one tooth. This shows how easy w

ancisco Bay, in Berkeley. You remember those great stone houses, Edwin, when we came down the hills fro

the boys, but they strove to comp

one houses for?"

e taught you now, by sand and pebbles and shells, to know how many people lived in those days. There was very much to teach. The young men and women we taught were called students. We had large rooms

Hoo-Hoo demanded. "Who hunted your meat for y

talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me-much food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful ac

it slip by, words and thoughts, as a

land, all the machines, everything. These food-getters were our slaves. We took almost all th

myself," Hare-Lip announced; "and if any man tri

d man

y few did that. They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare and administer to us a thousand-a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo-a thousand satisfactions and delights. And I was Profes

d my hands were soft, because I did no work with them, and m

s mangy goat-sk

rments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often every

u Granzer," Ho

hanged. Nobody washes these days, there are no convenien

disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs. Remember that word-germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a woodtick, su

began

see. If you can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's

s a thousand fingers like Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see. Take a grain of sand

or a billion, of them were in a man, in all the blood of a man, he was sick. These germs were a disease. There were many different kinds of them-more different kinds than there are grains of sand on this beach. We knew only a few of the kinds. The micro-organic world was an invisible world, a world we could not see

phrases of such extraordinary length and meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one a

ath, Granser," Edwi

ostrum of the lecture-hall, where, to another world audience, he had been

glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married into that tribe. My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramen-tos, and the Palo-Altos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are of the Sacramento

e things you can't see but which

doing this very rapidly so that in a short time there were many millions of them in the body. Then the man was sick. He had a disease, and the disease was named after t

eir bodies. Thus were countless millions and billions of human beings killed. And the more thickly men packed together, the more terrible were the new diseases that came to be. Long before my time, in the middle ages, there was the Black Plague that swept across Europe. It swept across Europe many times. There was tuberculosis, that ente

is a what-you-call-i

es of it. I have seen those pictures. But they never found a way to kill it. But in 1984, there was the Pantoblast Plague, a disease that broke out in a country called Brazil and that killed millions of people. But the bacteriologists found it out, and found the way to kill it, so that the Pantoblast Plague went no farther. They made what they called a serum, which they put into a man's body and which killed the pantoblast germs without ki

hey packed together on the earth; and the more thickly they were packed, the more new kinds of germs became diseases. There were warnings. Soldervetzsky, as early as 1929, told the bacteriologists that they had no guaranty against some new disease, a thousand times more

as there are grains of sand on this beach. And also, in that same invisible world it might well be that new kinds of germs came to be. It might

ip rose to his feet, an expressi

abble. Why don't you tell about the Red Death? If you

tears of age rolled down his cheeks and all the feebleness of

ust gettin' to the Scarlet Death, ain't you, Granser? He's just goin'