“The organic germs that caused these diseases depended on swamps, stagnant pools, and decaying animal and vegetable matter for nests in which to be cultivated, and from such places they were conveyed by the air or water and so reached the fluids of the human body in which their further cultivation went on, to the great grief of your race. Now there is not a swamp nor any such thing in all the world, and nothing whatever is allowed to decay. Everything that grows is either utilized or cremated. All refuse from the numerous chemical works is treated electrically and returned to the soil as a fertilizer. The water in their sewers is often not so very much worse than that which used to run in your water pipes, but it is all electrically treated and the precipitated sediment returned to the land while only the clear water is turned into the rivers.” “I suppose they no longer keep domestic animals,” said I. “They no longer keep them for use to any great extent, but they have preserved specimens of all the domestic animals, and some of those that were wild in your day as objects of curiosity. They also have some in the country as pets. There are a few wild animals in some of the large state parks that having never been disturbed have practically tamed themselves. Animal power passed out of use ages ago. The people are scrupulously nice in their ideas of cleanliness and so no animals of any sort, not even canary birds are allowed in the cities. In this respect they look back with unlimited disgust upon the people of your day with their filthy horses and dogs perambulating and befouling the streets, their stables, stores and meat shops full of the odors of decaying vegetable and animal matter, their accumulations of ashes and cinders and dust, and of filth and garbage in foul cess pools, barrels, gutters, vaults and sewers, their personal habits of eating and drinking with their sequelae and the necessary cooking and dishwashing, and their smoking and tobacco chewing and spitting. All this is done away with, and the people can hardly understand a mode of life in which it was included; much less necessary. “The streets of the cities are as clean as a drawing room, and it is easy to keep them so since there is so little occasion for them being soiled. “They use only electrically purified water or rain water, and far less than was consumed in your day. The houses are all fireproof and the fire departments have very little use for water, using chemical extinguishers. The factories for the manufacture of food stuffs, the mineral wood, furniture, vehicles, textile fabrics etc., are usually placed in suburbs at a little distance from the cities, and the working people pass back and forth by the cars or flyers. The usual day’s work is 4 to 6 hours and all sorts of work is paid by the hour. Manufactured goods are stored in the business quarters of the cities, and delivered where ordered as in your day, but by more exact and complete means.