Chapter 1 Excerpt

I stand in the doorway of an immense building, which appears to be devoted to the display of antiquities. Many people are entering, although the morning is young. A magnificent scene is before me.

At last I see a city in which are combined grandeur, cleanliness, order and picturesque loveliness. Between this one and those of the nineteenth century exists a difference as great, if not greater, than between the latter and the loathsome lairs of our cannibal progenitors reeking with refuse of human remains. My mind power has so widened that I know more than can be here told.

The buildings are truly grand works of art. All stand on noble columns of great size and strength. I cannot recognize what we call "streets." All structures are in clusters, though each house is separate. Very few prominent angles, only sufficient to make the curves more beautiful. Between the clusters are large distances, occupied in their centres by statuary, trees and scented shrubs. Many prettily-designed fountains are throwing their precious jewels into the rays a glorious morning sun. No smoke-disfigured architecture. No stream of poisonous filth, running with ferocious delight on its deathly errand. No besotted-looking creatures offending passers-by with debasing language. No jails. No knots of babbling men standing around entrances to public-houses, vying with each other for destruction of intelligence. Indeed, such things so pitiable could not be for here are no such houses. No ill-fed, barefooted, unclean children, learning the probationary steps to scoundrelism. No suffering animals, urged by cruelty to overtax their strength. No decrepitude in age. No careworn faces. All are lovely with the light of knowledge—knowledge not in the capabilities of our lower natures, but towards which we are surely tending.

I know these graceful beings are humans—yet how they differ from my own poor self, and all others of our era. They appear luminous with integrity and benevolence. Both sexes are bewitchingly graceful. Women are rather taller than the generality of the present generation, but the men are not such fine animals as those of my century, though far nobler looking.

Their ambition has evidently been to attain efficiency in intellect and benignity in preference to the retention of tiger muscle. Another link to the brute fast disappearing.

My increased comprehension tells me the inner life of these persons is as noble as the expression of their countenances. But this is very many thousands of years hence, as I now plainly perceive by the model of a racehorse placed amongst other models of extinct mammals in the spacious court-yard below where I stand.

Vehicles of different sizes are passing swiftly on the ground and in the air. Some disappear through large openings in upper stories of enormous buildings.

I hear the cheerful hum of busy life, but it seems too minute a sound compared with all that movement. Ah, our vanity in the present renders it extremely difficult to hear the sounds from future ages, or see what is there passing without deeming it illusion. Yet I distinctly feel some of these beings touch my hand and nerve me as they pass into the great hall.