with confusing rapidity.

Mankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those places
where the forces of nature have been most malign. The track, of the
Western tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still populous,
despite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and even the courts
of Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In the Peruvian
village straight downward into whose streets the crew of a United States
warship once looked from the crest of a wave that stranded her a half
mile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and the voices of
children at play. There are people living at Herculaneum and Pompeii. On
the slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with what courage he may
the trembling of the ground beneath his feet as old Enceladus again
turns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes back inside its banks
after fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of China-man the living
agriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up his habitation beneath
the broken embankment, and again the Valley of the Gone Away blossoms
as the rose, its people diving with Death.

This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because
it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge--no
temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the
altar--no "place apart" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude
the baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the
gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the
entire pack--earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild
beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague
and velvet-footed household disease--all are fierce and tireless in
pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them;
soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns