HOTMAILcity

An ancient city 

Going abroad, says an Ever-young man in an Arabian tale,I passed one day by an ancient and wonderfully populous city, and, taking one of its inhabitants aside, I asked him, how long it had been founded. It is a mighty city, was the answer, but we do not know how long it existed. Of course, there must have been a time, when no house stood here, and when no town was to be seen any where. Five centuries afterwards, I passed by the same place, but the city was gone, and upon its site there was a peasant gathering herbs; I asked him, how long that city had been destroyed. Whereupon the peasant said: The ground has never been different from what you behold it at present ._ 'Was there not of old', said I, 'a splendid city here?' _ Never, answered he, so far as we have seen; never did our fathers speak to us of any such, and, I think,there will hardly ever be a city built on this ground. On my return there, five hundred years later, I found a sea, and on its shores a party of fishermen, of whom I inquired, how long the land had been covered by the waters? This spot, said they, has undoubtedly always been what it is now. I again returned, after the same number of years, and found there a more populous, and more flourishing city than even the first. I would fain have known something of its origin, but the inhabitants said: Its rise is lost in antiquity, no one hitherto has found out how long it has existed , and our fathers knew no more thereof, than do ourselves."

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