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.: 34,072 in 1900, 32,452 in 1910; St. Joseph, Mo.: 102,979 in 1900, 77,403 in 1910.] and a large gain for nearly every city of the middle west. It is prophesied that before long one-half of the people of the United States will be living in cities, and there is the more distant prospect that the urban population will be two-thirds of the whole. [Footnote: In 1910 46.3 per cent resided in communities classed by the census as urban, and 55.1 per cent in cities and incorporated or unincorporated villages.] It is hopeless to try to turn that tide away from the cities except to suburban fields. So the great problem of that valley is to improve the cities, since from them are to be the issues of the new life, since they are, indeed, the hope of democracy. I have thought it of significance that the envisioned place of ultimate celestial felicity-seen though it was by a man in the solitude of a cave in an island of the Mediterranean (the place which the civilized world has dimly hanging over it, whenever it looks away from its tasks and into the beyond)--is not a lotus-land, not an oasis of spring and palm, not a stretch of forest and mountain, not even a quiet place by a sea of jasper, but a place of many tenements--a city, a perfect city to be sure, let down ultimately from the skies, with walls of precious stones--and no zone for Kipling's "Tomlinsons" about it--with gates whose octroi officials keep out whatever makes an abomination or a lie, but which are open to the east and west, the north and south, that the kings of earth may bring their glory and honor into it--a city whose streets are clean and smooth--a city that has flowing through it a river of pure water, on whose banks grow trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The obvious thing to do, since, good or bad, the country is emptying its population into the cities, since we cannot go back through the gates of Eden into the garden paradise of Genesis, is to go toward the city of the Apocalypses, not, to be sure, as the Oriental mind of John saw it, paved and walled with precious stones and gold, but made as beautiful as the Occidental taste and architectural skill will permit, as comfortable as Occidental standards demand, and as sanitary as the mortal desire for immortality can with finite wisdom make it.