a modest one

The philanthropist's hand falls from the book half-read, head droops, and a half-dreamt, half-thought ogre reappears: that a painless plague that afflicted a random nine-tenth of the world with infertility, and the rest with the inability to have more than a couple of children, then disappeared after a generation, leaving the children normal, only to reappear every thousand years or so, yet unpredictably, might be a greater kindness than any good heart or head might do.  The philanthropist's reawakens, shudders, and turns the page.