edward bellamy looking backward 2000 1887

With the city before me I could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of the changes have been. You told me when we were upon the house-top that though a century only had elapsed since I fell asleep, it had been marked by greater changes in the conditions of humanity than many a previous millennium. 'Before I acquired that,' I replied, 'I must know a little more about the sort of Boston I have come back to. Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with the feeling of an old citizen. When, in reply to my host's question, I frankly told him this, he replied that it would be strange if I did not feel just so, but that I need have no anxiety about sleeping whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give me a dose which would insure me a sound night's sleep without fail.

I knew I could not sleep that night, and as for lying awake and thinking, it argues no cowardice, I am sure, to confess that I was afraid of it. Even then, however, in pauses of the conversation I had had glimpses, vivid as lightning flashes, of the horror of strangeness that was waiting to be faced when I could no longer command diversion. Surrounded by these most friendly strangers, stimulated and supported by their sympathetic interest, I had been able to keep my mental balance. Now I had been looking forward all the evening with some dread to the time when I should be alone, on retiring for the night. It is decidedly not often that one has a chance to converse with a man of the nineteenth century.'

'I am a late bird, myself,' he said, 'and, without suspicion of flattery, I may say that a companion more interesting than yourself could scarcely be imagined. Leete and myself alone, he sounded me as to my disposition for sleep, saying that if I felt like it my bed was ready for me but if I was inclined to wakefulness nothing would please him better than to bear me company. When, in the course of the evening the ladies retired, leaving Dr.

Edward bellamy looking backward 2000 1887