who thought they knew him called him a great inventor; but
he, who knew himself better than any one else could know him, was aware
that, so far, he had not invented anything worthy the power which he
felt within himself.

After the tidal wave of improvements and discoveries which had burst
upon the world at the end of the nineteenth century there had been a
gradual subsidence of the waters of human progress, and year by year
they sank lower and lower, until, when the twentieth century was yet
young, it was a common thing to say that the human race seemed to have
gone backward fifty or even a hundred years.

It had become fashionable to be unprogressive. Like old furniture in
the century which had gone out, old manners, customs, and ideas had
now become more attractive than those which were modern and present.
Philosophers said that society was retrograding, that it was becoming
satisfied with less than was its due; but society answered that it was
falling back upon the things of its ancestors, which were sounder and
firmer, more simple and beautiful, more worthy of the true man and
woman, than all that mass of harassing improvement which had swept
down upon mankind in the troubled and nervous days at the end of the
nineteenth century.

On the great highways, smooth and beautiful, the stage-coach had taken
the place to a great degree of the railroad train; the steamship, which
moved most evenly and with less of the jarring and shaking consequent
upon high speed, was the favored vessel with ocean travellers. It
was not considered good form to read the daily papers; and only those
hurried to their business who were obliged to do so in order that their
employers might attend to their affairs in the leisurely manner which
was then the custom of the business world.

Fast horses had become almost unknown, and with those who still used
these animals a steady walker was the favorite. Bicycles had gone out as
the new century came in, it being a matter of course that they should
be superseded by the new electric vehicles of every sort and fashion, on
which one could work the pedals if he desired exercise, or sit quietly
if his inclinations were otherwise, and only the very young or the
intemperate allowed themselves rapid motion on their electric wheels. It
would have been considered as vulgar at that time to speed over a smooth
road as it would have been thought in the nineteenth century to run
along the city sidewalk.

Peo