"I dreamt of a City to the West of here," Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, "at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,-- a large City,-- busy, prospering, sacred." "A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . ." "Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah' way,-- " "I hope you are prepar'd for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,-- observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn'd to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,-- the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur'd upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,-- whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev'rything,-- no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,-- an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,-- perhaps at the very Longitude of your 'City,'-- we must reach at last an Anti-City,-- some concentration of Fate,-- some final condition of Abandonment,-- wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,-- lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful."