The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development.

First had come the nomad, the hunter, then had followed the agriculturist of the agricultural state, whose towns and cities and ports were but the headquarters and markets of the countryside.

And now, logical consequence of an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation of men.
Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture.

And when he glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the Continent, it failed him altogether.
He had a vision of city beyond city; cities on great plains, cities beside great rivers, vast cities along the sea margin, cities girdled by snowy mountains.

Over a great part of the earth the English tongue was spoken; taken together with its Spanish American and Hindoo and Negro and "Pidgin" dialects, it was the everyday-language of two-thirds of humanity.