took it with eagerness, and after poring long over the sweet face,
touched the picture with her lips.

"I know that she was good and lovely enough to well deserve your
tears," she said; "but remember her heartache was over long ago, and
she has been in heaven for nearly a century."

It was indeed so. Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a
century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own
tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it
was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this
confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that
none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them
to judge me. As we were about to leave the chamber, my eye rested upon
the great iron safe which stood in one corner. Calling my companion's
attention to it, I said:--

"This was my strong room as well as my sleeping room. In the safe
yonder are several thousand dollars in gold, and any amount of
securities. If I had known when I went to sleep that night just how
long my nap would be, I should still have thought that the gold was a
safe provision for my needs in any country or any century, however
distant. That a time would ever come when it would lose its purchasing
power, I should have considered the wildest of fancies. Nevertheless,
here I wake up to find myself among a people of whom a cartload of
gold will not procure a loaf of bread."

As might be expected, I did not succeed in impressing Edith that there
was anything remarkable in this fact. "Why in the world should it?"
she merely asked.

CHAPTER XXI.

It had been suggested by Dr. Leete that we should devote the next
morning to an inspection of the schools and colleges of the city, with
some attempt on his own part at an explanation of the educational
system of the twentieth century.

"You will see," said he, as we set out after breakfast, "many very
important differences between our methods of education and yours, but
the main difference is that nowadays all persons equally have those
opportunities of higher education which in your day only an
infinitesimal portion of the population enjoyed. We should think we
had gained nothing worth speaking of, in equalizing the physical
comfort of men, without this educational equality."

"The cost must be very great," I said.

"If it took half the revenue of the nation, nobody would grudge it,"
replied Dr. Leete, "nor even i