Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 Read online

  Chapter 3

  "He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one of us atfirst."

  "Promise me, then, that you will not tell him."

  The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoke inwhispers.

  "I will see how he seems," replied the man.

  "No, no, promise me," persisted the other.

  "Let her have her way," whispered a third voice, also a woman.

  "Well, well, I promise, then," answered the man. "Quick, go! He iscoming out of it."

  There was a rustle of garments and I opened my eyes. A fine looking manof perhaps sixty was bending over me, an expression of much benevolencemingled with great curiosity upon his features. He was an utterstranger. I raised myself on an elbow and looked around. The room wasempty. I certainly had never been in it before, or one furnished likeit. I looked back at my companion. He smiled.

  "How do you feel?" he inquired.

  "Where am I?" I demanded.

  "You are in my house," was the reply.

  "How came I here?"

  "We will talk about that when you are stronger. Meanwhile, I beg youwill feel no anxiety. You are among friends and in good hands. How doyou feel?"

  "A bit queerly," I replied, "but I am well, I suppose. Will you tell mehow I came to be indebted to your hospitality? What has happened to me?How came I here? It was in my own house that I went to sleep."

  "There will be time enough for explanations later," my unknown hostreplied, with a reassuring smile. "It will be better to avoid agitatingtalk until you are a little more yourself. Will you oblige me by takinga couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do you good. I am aphysician."

  I repelled the glass with my hand and sat up on the couch, althoughwith an effort, for my head was strangely light.

  "I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you have been doingwith me," I said.

  "My dear sir," responded my companion, "let me beg that you will notagitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanationsso soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you willfirst take this draught, which will strengthen you somewhat."

  I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, "It is not sosimple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell you how you came here.You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you. You havejust been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly, trance. So muchI can tell you. You say you were in your own house when you fell intothat sleep. May I ask you when that was?"

  "When?" I replied, "when? Why, last evening, of course, at about teno'clock. I left my man Sawyer orders to call me at nine o'clock. Whathas become of Sawyer?"

  "I can't precisely tell you that," replied my companion, regarding mewith a curious expression, "but I am sure that he is excusable for notbeing here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when itwas that you fell into that sleep, the date, I mean?"

  "Why, last night, of course; I said so, didn't I? that is, unless Ihave overslept an entire day. Great heavens! that cannot be possible;and yet I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It wasDecoration Day that I went to sleep."

  "Decoration Day?"

  "Yes, Monday, the 30th."

  "Pardon me, the 30th of what?"

  "Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into June, but thatcan't be."

  "This month is September."

  "September! You don't mean that I've slept since May! God in heaven!Why, it is incredible."

  "We shall see," replied my companion; "you say that it was May 30thwhen you went to sleep?"

  "Yes."

  "May I ask of what year?"

  I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments.

  "Of what year?" I feebly echoed at last.

  "Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that I shallbe able to tell you how long you have slept."

  "It was the year 1887," I said.

  My companion insisted that I should take another draught from theglass, and felt my pulse.

  "My dear sir," he said, "your manner indicates that you are a man ofculture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of course in yourday it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observationthat nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful thananything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, andthe results equally matters of course. That you should be startled bywhat I shall tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that youwill not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance isthat of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition seemsnot greatly different from that of one just roused from a somewhat toolong and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth day of September inthe year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundred and thirteenyears, three months, and eleven days."

  Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at mycompanion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming verydrowsy, went off into a deep sleep.

  When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lightedartificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sittingnear. He was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a goodopportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation,before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and mymind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred andthirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, Ihad accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejectedas a preposterous attempt at an imposture, the motive of which it wasimpossible remotely to surmise.

  Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for my wakingup in this strange house with this unknown companion, but my fancy wasutterly impotent to suggest more than the wildest guess as to what thatsomething might have been. Could it be that I was the victim of somesort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet, if humanlineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by myside, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to any schemeof crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I might notbe the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part of friends whohad somehow learned the secret of my underground chamber and taken thismeans of impressing me with the peril of mesmeric experiments. Therewere great difficulties in the way of this theory; Sawyer would neverhave betrayed me, nor had I any friends at all likely to undertake suchan enterprise; nevertheless the supposition that I was the victim of apractical joke seemed on the whole the only one tenable. Half expectingto catch a glimpse of some familiar face grinning from behind a chairor curtain, I looked carefully about the room. When my eyes next restedon my companion, he was looking at me.

  "You have had a fine nap of twelve hours," he said briskly, "and I cansee that it has done you good. You look much better. Your color is goodand your eyes are bright. How do you feel?"

  "I never felt better," I said, sitting up.

  "You remember your first waking, no doubt," he pursued, "and yoursurprise when I told you how long you had been asleep?"

  "You said, I believe, that I had slept one hundred and thirteen years."

  "Exactly."

  "You will admit," I said, with an ironical smile, "that the story wasrather an improbable one."

  "Extraordinary, I admit," he responded, "but given the properconditions, not improbable nor inconsistent with what we know of thetrance state. When complete, as in your case, the vital functions areabsolutely suspended, and there is no waste of the tissues. No limitcan be set to the possible duration of a trance when the externalconditions protect the body from physical injury. This trance of yoursis indeed the longest of which there is any positive record, but thereis no known reason wherefore, had you not been discovered and had thechamber in which we found you continued intact, you might not haveremained in a state of suspended animation till, at the end ofindefinite ages, the gradual refrigeration of the earth had destroyedthe bodily tissues and set the spirit free."

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bsp; I had to admit that, if I were indeed the victim of a practical joke,its authors had chosen an admirable agent for carrying out theirimposition. The impressive and even eloquent manner of this man wouldhave lent dignity to an argument that the moon was made of cheese. Thesmile with which I had regarded him as he advanced his trancehypothesis did not appear to confuse him in the slightest degree.

  "Perhaps," I said, "you will go on and favor me with some particularsas to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber ofwhich you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction."

  "In this case," was the grave reply, "no fiction could be so strange asthe truth. You must know that these many years I have been cherishingthe idea of building a laboratory in the large garden beside thishouse, for the purpose of chemical experiments for which I have ataste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at last begun.It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons were to havecome. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, and Fridaymorning I found my cellar a frog-pond and the walls quite washed down.My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster with me, called myattention to a corner of masonry laid bare by the crumbling away of oneof the walls. I cleared a little earth from it, and, finding that itseemed part of a large mass, determined to investigate it. The workmenI sent for unearthed an oblong vault some eight feet below the surface,and set in the corner of what had evidently been the foundation wallsof an ancient house. A layer of ashes and charcoal on the top of thevault showed that the house above had perished by fire. The vaultitself was perfectly intact, the cement being as good as when firstapplied. It had a door, but this we could not force, and found entranceby removing one of the flagstones which formed the roof. The air whichcame up was stagnant but pure, dry and not cold. Descending with alantern, I found myself in an apartment fitted up as a bedroom in thestyle of the nineteenth century. On the bed lay a young man. That hewas dead and must have been dead a century was of course to be takenfor granted; but the extraordinary state of preservation of the bodystruck me and the medical colleagues whom I had summoned withamazement. That the art of such embalming as this had ever been knownwe should not have believed, yet here seemed conclusive testimony thatour immediate ancestors had possessed it. My medical colleagues, whosecuriosity was highly excited, were at once for undertaking experimentsto test the nature of the process employed, but I withheld them. Mymotive in so doing, at least the only motive I now need speak of, wasthe recollection of something I once had read about the extent to whichyour contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. Ithad occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a trance,and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time wasnot the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did thisidea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellowphysicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponingtheir experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me, than I set onfoot a systematic attempt at resuscitation, of which you know theresult."

  Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality of thisnarrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of thenarrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feel verystrangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of myreflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose and wentup to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line and not aday older than the one I had looked at as I tied my cravat before goingto Edith that Decoration Day, which, as this man would have me believe,was celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before. At this, thecolossal character of the fraud which was being attempted on me, cameover me afresh. Indignation mastered my mind as I realized theoutrageous liberty that had been taken.

  "You are probably surprised," said my companion, "to see that, althoughyou are a century older than when you lay down to sleep in thatunderground chamber, your appearance is unchanged. That should notamaze you. It is by virtue of the total arrest of the vital functionsthat you have survived this great period of time. If your body couldhave undergone any change during your trance, it would long ago havesuffered dissolution."

  "Sir," I replied, turning to him, "what your motive can be in recitingto me with a serious face this remarkable farrago, I am utterly unableto guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose thatanybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more ofthis elaborate nonsense and once for all tell me whether you refuse togive me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. Ifso, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoever mayhinder."

  "You do not, then, believe that this is the year 2000?"

  "Do you really think it necessary to ask me that?" I returned.

  "Very well," replied my extraordinary host. "Since I cannot convinceyou, you shall convince yourself. Are you strong enough to follow meupstairs?"

  "I am as strong as I ever was," I replied angrily, "as I may have toprove if this jest is carried much farther."

  "I beg, sir," was my companion's response, "that you will not allowyourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick,lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of mystatements, should be too great."

  The tone of concern, mingled with commiseration, with which he saidthis, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hot words,strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with anextraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights ofstairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere onthe house-top. "Be pleased to look around you," he said, as we reachedthe platform, "and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenthcentury."

  At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by treesand lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuousblocks but set in larger or smaller inclosures, stretched in everydirection. Every quarter contained large open squares filled withtrees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the lateafternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architecturalgrandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on everyside. Surely I had never seen this city nor one comparable to itbefore. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward.That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it not the sinuousCharles? I looked east; Boston harbor stretched before me within itsheadlands, not one of its green islets missing.

  I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigiousthing which had befallen me.