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.
"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."
"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."
"Only a century has passed," he answered, "but many a millennium in the
world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."
"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."
"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 you
will find it easy to make yourself at home in it."
After my refreshment Dr. Leete offered me a bath and a change of
clothing, of which I gladly availed myself.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and as we
talked 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 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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
[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.