| Chapter 4
| 0 | |
| I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me
very giddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me
a strong arm as he conducted me from the roof to a roomy
apartment on the upper floor of the house, where he insisted on
my drinking a glass or two of good wine and partaking of a light
repast.
| 1 | |
| "I think you are going to be all right now," he said cheerily. "I
should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your
position if your course, while perfectly excusable under the
circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess," he
added laughing, "I was a little apprehensive at one time that I
should undergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in
the nineteenth century, if I did not act rather promptly. I
remembered that the Bostonians of your day were famous
pugilists, and thought best to lose no time. I take it you are now
ready to acquit me of the charge of hoaxing you."
| 2 | |
| "If you had told me," I replied, profoundly awed, "that a
thousand years instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last
looked on this city, I should now believe you."
| 3 | |
| "Only a century has passed," he answered, "but many a
millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."
| 4 | |
| "And now," he added, extending his hand with an air of
irresistible cordiality, "let me give you a hearty welcome to the
Boston of the twentieth century and to this house. My name is
Leete, Dr. Leete they call me."
| 5 | |
| "My name," I said as I shook his hand, "is Julian West."
| 6 | |
| "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 you will find it easy to make yourself at
home in it."
| 7 | |
| After my refreshment Dr. Leete offered me a bath and a
change of clothing, of which I gladly availed myself.
| 8 | |
| It did not appear that any very startling revolution in men's
attire had been among the great changes my host had spoken of,
for, barring a few details, my new habiliments did not puzzle me
at all.
| 9 | |
| Physically, I was now myself again. But mentally, how was it
with me, the reader will doubtless wonder. What were my
intellectual sensations, he may wish to know, on finding myself
so suddenly dropped as it were into a new world. In reply let me
ask him to suppose himself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye,
transported from earth, say, to Paradise or Hades. What does
he fancy would be his own experience? Would his thoughts
return at once to the earth he had just left, or would he, after
the first shock, wellnigh forget his former life for a while, albeit
to be remembered later, in the interest excited by his new
surroundings? All I can say is, that if his experience were at all
like mine in the transition I am describing, the latter hypothesis
would prove the correct one. The impressions of amazement and
curiosity which my new surroundings produced occupied my
mind, after the first shock, to the exclusion of all other thoughts.
For the time the memory of my former life was, as it were, in
abeyance.
| 10 | |
| No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through
the kind offices 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 to numerous questions on my part, as to
the ancient landmarks I missed and the new ones which had
replaced them, he asked me what point of the contrast between
the new and the old city struck me most forcibly.
| 11 | |
| "To speak of small things before great," I responded, "I really
think that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is
the detail that first impressed me."
| 12 | |
| "Ah!" ejaculated my companion with an air of much interest,
"I had forgotten the chimneys, it is so long since they went out
of use. It is nearly a century since the crude method of
combustion on which you depended for heat became obsolete."
| 13 | |
| "In general," I said, "what impresses me most about the city is
the material prosperity on the part of the people which its
magnificence implies."
| 14 | |
| "I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston
of your day," replied Dr. Leete. "No doubt, as you imply, the
cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the
taste to make them splendid, which I would not be so rude as to
question, the general poverty resulting from your extraordinary
industrial system would not have given you the means.
Moreover, the excessive individualism which then prevailed was
inconsistent with much public spirit. What little wealth you had
seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private luxury.
Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of the surplus
wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy
in equal degree."
| 15 | |
| The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and
as we talked night descended upon the city.
| 16 | |
| "It is growing dark," said Dr. Leete. "Let us descend into the
house; I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you."
| 17 | |
| His words recalled to me the feminine voices which I had
heard whispering about me as I was coming back to conscious
life; and, most curious to learn what the ladies of the year 2000
were like, I assented with alacrity to the proposition. The
apartment in which we found the wife and daughter of my host,
as well as the entire interior of the house, was filled with a
mellow light, which I knew must be artificial, although I could
not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Leete
was an exceptionally fine looking and well preserved woman of
about her husband's age, while the daughter, who was in the first
blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever
seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately
tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even
had her countenance lacked special charms, the faultless luxuriance
of her figure would have given her place as a beauty among
the women of the nineteenth century. Feminine softness and
delicacy were in this lovely creature deliciously combined with
an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality too
often lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare
her. It was a coincidence trifling in comparison with the general
strangeness of the situation, but still striking, that her name
should be Edith.
| 18 | |
| The evening that followed was certainly unique in the history
of social intercourse, but to suppose that our conversation was
peculiarly strained or difficult would be a great mistake. I believe
indeed that it is under what may be called unnatural, in the
sense of extraordinary, circumstances that people behave most
naturally, for the reason, no doubt, that such circumstances
banish artificiality. I know at any rate that my intercourse that
evening with these representatives of another age and world was
marked by an ingenuous sincerity and frankness such as but
rarely crown long acquaintance. No doubt the exquisite tact of
my entertainers had much to do with this. Of course there was
nothing we could talk of but the strange experience by virtue of
which I was there, but they talked of it with an interest so naive
and direct in its expression as to relieve the subject to a great
degree of the element of the weird and the uncanny which
might so easily have been overpowering. One would have supposed
that they were quite in the habit of entertaining waifs
from another century, so perfect was their tact.
| 19 | |
| For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my
mind to have been more alert and acute than that evening, or
my intellectual sensibilities more keen. Of course I do not mean
that the consciousness of my amazing situation was for a
moment out of mind, but its chief effect thus far was to produce
a feverish elation, a sort of mental intoxication.[1]
| 20 | |
| [1] In accounting for this state of mind it must be remembered
that, except for the topic of our conversations, there was in 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
social circles vastly more foreign to me. The speech of the Bostonians
of the twentieth century differs even less from that of their
cultured ancestors of the nineteenth than did that of the latter
from the language of Washington and Franklin, while the differences
between the style of dress and furniture of the two epochs
are not more marked than I have known fashion to make in the
time of one generation.
| 21 | |
| Edith Leete took little part in the conversation, but when
several times the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her
face, I found her eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity,
almost like fascination. It was evident that I had excited her
interest to an extraordinary degree, as was not astonishing,
supposing her to be a girl of imagination. Though I supposed
curiosity was the chief motive of her interest, it could but affect
me as it would not have done had she been less beautiful.
| 22 | |
| Dr. Leete, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in
my account of the circumstances under which I had gone to
sleep in the underground chamber. All had suggestions to offer
to account for my having been forgotten there, and the theory
which we finally agreed on offers at least a plausible explanation,
although whether it be in its details the true one, nobody, of
course, will ever know. The layer of ashes found above the
chamber indicated that the house had been burned down. Let it
be supposed that the conflagration had taken place the night I
fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Sawyer lost his life in
the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the rest
follows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Pillsbury either
knew of the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, and Dr.
Pillsbury, who had gone that night to New Orleans, had
probably never heard of the fire at all. The conclusion of my
friends, and of the public, must have been that I had perished in
the flames. An excavation of the ruins, unless thorough, would
not have disclosed the recess in the foundation walls connecting
with my chamber. To be sure, if the site had been again built
upon, at least immediately, such an excavation would have been
necessary, but the troublous times and the undesirable character
of the locality might well have prevented rebuilding. The size of
the trees in the garden now occupying the site indicated, Dr.
Leete said, that for more than half a century at least it had been
open ground.
| 23 | |
|