The Scarlet Plague | Page 6

itself into pure English. The sentences grew longer and were enunciated
with a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lecture platform.
"Tell us about the Red Death, Granser," Hare-Lip demanded, when the
teeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded.
"The Scarlet Death," Edwin corrected.
"An' don't work all that funny lingo on us," Hare-Lip went on. "Talk
sensible, Granser, like a Santa Rosan ought to talk. Other Santa Rosans
don't talk like you."

II
THE old man showed pleasure in being thus called upon. He cleared
his throat and began.
"Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in great demand. But in these
days nobody seems interested--"
"There you go!" Hare-Lip cried hotly. "Cut out the funny stuff and talk

sensible. What's interested? You talk like a baby that don't know how."
"Let him alone," Edwin urged, "or he'll get mad and won't talk at all.
Skip the funny places. We'll catch on to some of what he tells us."
"Let her go, Granser," Hoo-Hoo encouraged; for the old man was
already maundering about the disrespect for elders and the reversion to
cruelty of all humans that fell from high culture to primitive conditions.
The tale began.
"There were very many people in the world in those days. San
Francisco alone held four millions--"
"What is millions?" Edwin interrupted.
Granser looked at him kindly.
"I know you cannot count beyond ten, so I will tell you. Hold up your
two hands. On both of them you have altogether ten fingers and thumbs.
Very well. I now take this grain of sand--you hold it, Hoo-Hoo." He
dropped the grain of sand into the lad's palm and went on. "Now that
grain of sand stands for the ten fingers of Edwin. I add another grain.
That's ten more fingers. And I add another, and another, and another,
until I have added as many grains as Edwin has fingers and thumbs.
That makes what I call one hundred. Remember that word--one
hundred. Now I put this pebble in Hare-Lip's hand. It stands for ten
grains of sand, or ten tens of fingers, or one hundred fingers. I put in
ten pebbles. They stand for a thousand fingers. I take a mussel-shell,
and it stands for ten pebbles, or one hundred grains of sand, or one
thousand fingers...." And so on, laboriously, and with much reiteration,
he strove to build up in their minds a crude conception of numbers. As
the quantities increased, he had the boys holding different magnitudes
in each of their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the symbols on the
log of driftwood; and for symbols he was hard put, being compelled to
use the teeth from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for
billions. It was here that he stopped, for the boys were showing signs of
becoming tired.

"There were four million people in San Francisco--four teeth."
The boys' eyes ranged along from the teeth and from hand to hand,
down through the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back
again they ranged along the ascending series in the effort to grasp such
inconceivable numbers.
"That was a lot of folks, Granser," Edwin at last hazarded.
"Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the beach, each grain of sand
a man, or woman, or child. Yes, my boy, all those people lived right
here in San Francisco. And at one time or another all those people came
out on this very beach--more people than there are grains of sand.
More--more--more. And San Francisco was a noble city. And across
the bay--where we camped last year, even more people lived, clear
from Point Richmond, on the level ground and on the hills, all the way
around to San Leandro--one great city of seven million people.--Seven
teeth... there, that's it, seven millions."
Again the boys' eyes ranged up and down from Edwin's fingers to the
teeth on the log.
"The world was full of people. The census of 2010 gave eight billions
for the whole world--eight crab-shells, yes, eight billions. It was not
like to-day. Mankind knew a great deal more about getting food. And
the more food there was, the more people there were. In the year 1800,
there were one hundred and seventy millions in Europe alone. One
hundred years later--a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo--one hundred years later,
at 1900, there were five hundred millions in Europe--five grains of sand,
Hoo-Hoo, and this one tooth. This shows how easy was the getting of
food, and how men increased. And in the year 2000 there were fifteen
hundred millions in Europe. And it was the same all over the rest of the
world. Eight crab-shells there, yes, eight billion people were alive on
the earth when the Scarlet Death began.
"I was a