coach to which the masses were harnessed and dragged toilsomely along a
very hilly and sandy road, with Hunger for driver. The passengers
comfortably seated on the top would call down encouragingly to the
toilers at the rope, exhorting them to patience; but always expected to
be drawn and not to pull, because, as they thought, they were not like
their brothers who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way
belonging to a higher order of beings.

In 1887, I was engaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on
the top of the coach. Our marriage only awaited the completion of a
house, which, however, was delayed by a series of strikes. I remember
Mr. Bartlett saying: "The working classes all over the world seem to be
going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here."

The family mansion, in which I lived alone with a faithful coloured
servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of
bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a
sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be
built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this
retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional
mesmeriser to put me into a hypnotic sleep, from which Sawyer knew how
to arouse me at a given time.

On the night of May 30, 1887, I was put to sleep as usual. That night
the house was wholly destroyed by fire; and it was not until a hundred
and thirteen years later, in September 2000 A.D., that the subterranean
chamber was discovered, and myself, the sleeper, aroused by Dr. Leete, a
physician of Boston on the retired list. My companion, Dr. Leete, led
the way to a belvedere on the house-top. "Be pleased to look around
you," he said, "and tell me whether this is the Boston of the nineteenth
century."

At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees,
and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous
blocks, but set in larger or smaller enclosures, stretched in every
direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees,
among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late
afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural
grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every
side. Surely, I had never before seen this city, nor one comparable to
it. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward.