Spit rather on the gate of the city, and--turn back!
Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
That he was within the boundary of Torquas, Carthoris was sure, but that there existed there such a wondrous city he never had dreamed, nor had the chronicles of the past even hinted at such a possibility, for the Torquasians were known to live, as did the other green men of Mars, within the deserted cities that dotted the dying planet, nor ever had any green horde built so much as a single edifice, other than the low-walled incubators where their young are hatched by the sun's heat.
The encircling camp of green warriors lay about five hundred yards from the city's walls.
His counsel seemed wise; and as there was apparently no other way to insure a successful entry to Kadabra, the capital
city of Okar, we set out with Talu, Prince of Marentina, for his little, rock-bound country.
A great corporation, nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand dollars to the Bell Company, while at the same time a young Irish immigrant boy, just arrived in New York
City, may offer five coppers and find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system.
"Because the Emerald
City has been ruled by men long enough, for one reason," said the girl.
In the valley beneath lay the
city they had just left, its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric drawing--among them the broad cathedral tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave, the spires of St Thomas's, the pinnacled tower of the College, and, more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale.
No
city in the world was ever so finely placed as New York, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirably disposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the complex immensities of bridges and mono-railways and feats of engineering.
The Emerald
City, which is the most splendid as well as the most beautiful
city in any fairyland, is surrounded by a high, thick wall of green marble, polished smooth and set with glistening emeralds.
"Goosal say," translated Tal, "that he know a story of a very old
city away down under ground."
Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of the
City which has the form of a cradle.
The
city wall appeared to be about thirty feet in height, its plastered expanse unbroken except by occasional embrasures.
My home now was upon an avenue leading into the plaza from the south, the main artery down which we had marched from the gates of the
city. I was at the far end of the square and had an entire building to myself.
And when many villages so entirely join themselves together as in every respect to form but one society, that society is a
city, and contains in itself, if I may so speak, the end and perfection of government: first founded that we might live, but continued that we may live happily.
