Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Page 7

  CHAPTER IV.

  I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me verygiddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me a strong arm ashe conducted me from the roof to a roomy apartment on the upper floorof the house, where he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of goodwine and partaking of a light repast.

  "I think you are going to be all right now," he said cheerily. "Ishould not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of yourposition if your course, while perfectly excusable under thecircumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess," headded laughing, "I was a little apprehensive at one time that I shouldundergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in the nineteenthcentury, if I did not act rather promptly. I remembered that theBostonians of your day were famous pugilists, and thought best to loseno time. I take it you are now ready to acquit me of the charge ofhoaxing you."

  "If you had told me," I replied, profoundly awed, "that a thousandyears instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last looked on thiscity, I should now believe you."

  "Only a century has passed," he answered, "but many a millennium inthe world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."

  "And now," he added, extending his hand with an air of irresistiblecordiality, "let me give you a hearty welcome to the Boston of thetwentieth century and to this house. My name is Leete, Dr. Leete theycall me."

  "My name," I said as I shook his hand, "is Julian West."

  "I am most happy in making your acquaintance, Mr. West," he responded."Seeing that this house is built on the site of your own, I hope youwill find it easy to make yourself at home in it."

  After my refreshment Dr. Leete offered me a bath and a change ofclothing, of which I gladly availed myself.

  It did not appear that any very startling revolution in men's attirehad been among the great changes my host had spoken of, for, barring afew details, my new habiliments did not puzzle me at all.

  Physically, I was now myself again. But mentally, how was it with me,the reader will doubtless wonder. What were my intellectualsensations, he may wish to know, on finding myself so suddenly droppedas it were into a new world. In reply let me ask him to supposehimself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, transported from earth,say, to Paradise or Hades. What does he fancy would be his ownexperience? Would his thoughts return at once to the earth he had justleft, or would he, after the first shock, wellnigh forget his formerlife for a while, albeit to be remembered later, in the interestexcited by his new surroundings? All I can say is, that if hisexperience were at all like mine in the transition I am describing,the latter hypothesis would prove the correct one. The impressions ofamazement and curiosity which my new surroundings produced occupied mymind, after the first shock, to the exclusion of all other thoughts.For the time the memory of my former life was, as it were, inabeyance.

  No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through the kindoffices of my host, than I became eager to return to the house-top;and presently we were comfortably established there in easy-chairs,with the city beneath and around us. After Dr. Leete had responded tonumerous questions on my part, as to the ancient landmarks I missedand the new ones which had replaced them, he asked me what point ofthe contrast between the new and the old city struck me most forcibly.

  "To speak of small things before great," I responded, "I really thinkthat the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detailthat first impressed me."

  "Ah!" ejaculated my companion with an air of much interest, "I hadforgotten the chimneys, it is so long since they went out of use. Itis nearly a century since the crude method of combustion on which youdepended for heat became obsolete."

  "In general," I said, "what impresses me most about the city is thematerial prosperity on the part of the people which its magnificenceimplies."

  "I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston of yourday," replied Dr. Leete. "No doubt, as you imply, the cities of thatperiod were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make themsplendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the generalpoverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would nothave given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism whichthen prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What littlewealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in privateluxury. Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of thesurplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which allenjoy in equal degree."

  The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and as wetalked night descended upon the city.

  "It is growing dark," said Dr. Leete. "Let us descend into the house;I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you."

  His words recalled to me the feminine voices which I had heardwhispering about me as I was coming back to conscious life; and, mostcurious to learn what the ladies of the year 2000 were like, Iassented with alacrity to the proposition. The apartment in which wefound the wife and daughter of my host, as well as the entire interiorof the house, was filled with a mellow light, which I knew must beartificial, although I could not discover the source from which it wasdiffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine looking and wellpreserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, whowas in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I hadever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicatelytinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even hadher countenance lacked special charms, the faultless luxuriance of herfigure would have given her place as a beauty among the women of thenineteenth century. Feminine softness and delicacy were in this lovelycreature deliciously combined with an appearance of health andabounding physical vitality too often lacking in the maidens with whomalone I could compare her. It was a coincidence trifling in comparisonwith the general strangeness of the situation, but still striking,that her name should be Edith.

  The evening that followed was certainly unique in the history ofsocial intercourse, but to suppose that our conversation waspeculiarly strained or difficult would be a great mistake. I believeindeed that it is under what may be called unnatural, in the sense ofextraordinary, circumstances that people behave most naturally, forthe reason, no doubt, that such circumstances banish artificiality. Iknow at any rate that my intercourse that evening with theserepresentatives of another age and world was marked by an ingenuoussincerity and frankness such as but rarely crown long acquaintance. Nodoubt the exquisite tact of my entertainers had much to do with this.Of course there was nothing we could talk of but the strangeexperience by virtue of which I was there, but they talked of it withan interest so naive and direct in its expression as to relieve thesubject to a great degree of the element of the weird and the uncannywhich might so easily have been overpowering. One would have supposedthat they were quite in the habit of entertaining waifs from anothercentury, so perfect was their tact.

  For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind to havebeen more alert and acute than that evening, or my intellectualsensibilities more keen. Of course I do not mean that theconsciousness of my amazing situation was for a moment out of mind,but its chief effect thus far was to produce a feverish elation, asort of mental intoxication.[1]

  Edith Leete took little part in the conversation, but when severaltimes the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her face, I foundher eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity, almost likefascination. It was evident that I had excited her interest to anextraordinary degree, as was not astonishing, supposing her to be agirl of imagination. Though I supposed curiosity was the chief motiveof her interest, it could but affect me as it would not have done hadshe been less beautiful.

  Dr. Leete, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in myaccount of the circumstances under which I had gone to sleep in theunderground chamber. All had suggestions to offer to account for myhaving been forgotten there, and the theory which we finally agreed onoffers at least a plausible explanation, although whether it be in itsdetails the true one, nobody, of course,
will ever know. The layer ofashes found above the chamber indicated that the house had been burneddown. Let it be supposed that the conflagration had taken place thenight I fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Sawyer lost hislife in the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the restfollows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Pillsbury either knewof the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, and Dr.Pillsbury, who had gone that night to New Orleans, had probably neverheard of the fire at all. The conclusion of my friends, and of thepublic, must have been that I had perished in the flames. Anexcavation of the ruins, unless thorough, would not have disclosed therecess in the foundation walls connecting with my chamber. To be sure,if the site had been again built upon, at least immediately, such anexcavation would have been necessary, but the troublous times and theundesirable character of the locality might well have preventedrebuilding. The size of the trees in the garden now occupying the siteindicated, Dr. Leete said, that for more than half a century at leastit had been open ground.

  [Footnote 1: In accounting for this state of mind it must beremembered that, except for the topic of our conversations, there wasin my surroundings next to nothing to suggest what had befallen me.Within a block of my home in the old Boston I could have found socialcircles vastly more foreign to me. The speech of the Bostonians of thetwentieth century differs even less from that of their culturedancestors of the nineteenth than did that of the latter from thelanguage of Washington and Franklin, while the differences between thestyle of dress and furniture of the two epochs are not more markedthan I have known fashion to make in the time of one generation.]