CHAPTER IV.
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.
