ABSTRACT
The city, inhabited by the memories of the author, moves not only backwards into art history, started by the great names which mark every station of recorded time, but also back and forth in the living present, so to speak among its contemporary faiths and races; the hundred little spheres which religion or lore creates and which cohere softly together like the cells to form the great sprawling jellyfish which is Alexandria today. For three hundred years the city had been growing. It developed by degrees a central nervous system of strong wires and buried cables, a circulatory system with pumps and reservoirs, and excretory system. It evolved from the invertebrate enormity of wild growth to a higher creature having tangible attributes that go with the subjective concepts of will and purpose and consciousness. Every industrializing nation must go through a period of slum formation, and the United States is no exception.
