I was constantly losing more details, but in general the growth of the city was outward and upward. Presently there came a pause, as though the city were resting. Occasional areas were blurred by their changing form; across the river in Jersey a tremendous tower was rising into the sky far above me. But as a whole the scene had quieted. My brain was confused by what I had tried to observe and comprehend. I found myself hungry and a little faint. I dropped into my seat. The dials beside me caught my attention. The century-dial pointer had passed eighteen. Eighteen hundred years, and approaching two thousand even as I sat staring at it. The clock marked one forty. I had been gone almost four hours. I said the city was resting. That is true. The growth of two thousand years had carried it to splendors of mechanical perfection that I could only guess at. But now it seemed to have reached its height; the summit of human achievement had been attained. I waited and watched through another period. There were changes, but they were minor. I suppose all the buildings and various structures decayed and were replenished. I do not know. The changes were too fleeting for me to see, and the general form remained the same. I was at what seemed the pinnacle of civilization, where mankind was resting and enjoying the results of its labors. Decadence was bound to come, as truly as death followed birth. The clock now recorded two fifty. I had been gone five hours. The century-dial was beyond thirty-seven hundred years. Two thousand years of growth upward from our own time-world, and only two thousand more of resting on the summit before the inevitable decline began. He who stands still, goes backward. And so it is with mankind as a whole. This triumphant city went down almost as quickly at it had come up. And through the windows of that cabin I watched it--neglected a little at first, then more and more as its softened masters, with nature turned against them, became unable to cope with it, until at last it broke up and sank back into ruin, decay and desolation. CHAPTER FOUR Occasionally, now, some brave effort seemed to be made to build the city on a different scale. There were other types of architecture, always smaller; little sections, newly built, stood heroically, surrounded by gigantic, moldy ruins. Suddenly I realized that it was a dead city at which I was staring. There were no longer changes, except those natural to the passing years. The city was deserted; its inhabitants had died or had fled--or both.