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by Jean Ingelow
Dear little boys and girls who are reading this book, I have a brother and sister who are about as old as you are, and I have told you some of the things that they say and do I am generally very happy when I am with them, because we talk about sensible things that one can understand, such things as dolls, and lesson books, and fairies, and the Middle Ages, and being good; but the other day a cousin of mine, who is not at all stupid, wrote to me and said such a very curious thing had happened to him that he should like to relate it to me, only that I was such a matter-of-fact person, he was afraid I might not understand it 'But the children would understand very well,' he added, 'if you liked to read it to them ' So I replied, 'Tell us all about it, then, by all means'; and he accordingly sent me this letter, which has a good many hard words in it, and is very odd altogether Do you think it can possibly be true? My little sister says she is sure it is not.
Your affectionate friend,
ORRIS.
MY DEAR ORRIS--You have, no doubt, often heard quoted the celebrated lines, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy ' You have heard this, I say; and, as I believe you to be a person of sense, I shall take for granted that you believe it
Why should we be so fond of saying, 'Impossible!' 'Incredible!' 'Improbable?' These are three empty words, yet how many a fine story have they marred! How can you tell whether what is impossible to you may not be possible to other people? Why should we shrink so sensitively from all belief in that which seems marvellous? Why are we determined to lay down laws, draw lines, fix boundaries, and then say, 'Everything on this side the line I will believe, and nothing on the other side?' Does not the colour on the cheek soften away so gradually that none can say where it finally melts into the whiter temple and brow? Would it be improved by being fixed and defined? I once saw a little white-faced child take a red peony leaf and playfully fix it to her cheek: the effect was not fair
Even so, Orris my cousin, it is not well resolutely to define and bind with a hard line our belief on certain subjects: there must be some things which, if we cannot affirm them to be true, we cannot declare to be false: we see them as it were by twilight.
It may sometimes have happened to you, Orris, to have walked out in the dusk and seen some white object, which at first you took to be a horse reposing in ~1 field, but afterwards, changing your mind, you said was Goodman Hodge's Sunday shirt laid out to bleach by his consort, and, upon a nearer approach, you were almost sure that it was either a heap of stones or a heap of turnips Now, some things which to you have an unreal and illusive appearance may have truly been, and certainly happened to me. Mock not, then, at what I am going to tell you, but remember. that if I may be mistaken in thinking it ever took place, so may you be in thinking it never did
What is the use of beating about the bush in this way? I will launch at once into my narrative like a man and a Briton
It was not more than a week since, Orris, that I was seated before my study fire in the dusk of the evening I had done a hard day's work, and was indulging in a reverie, while the white ashes which encrusted my burning logs shaped themselves into cathedrals. alps. and avalanches, for my special pleasure and edification. I looked towards the window; the wind was rocking the black branches of the leafless trees; splashes of rain were breaking into spray in the corners of the casement, which rattled and creaked; while within-doors the wind lifted up my carpet into a succession of gusty waves. You cannot imagine what a windy, noisy night it was: the dogs were barking in the yard, the ringers were clashing those bells in the church steeple, the branches were creaking, and altogether I felt so desolate and uncomfortable that, when my landlady came in to draw the curtain and bring me my cap and railway wrapper, I was quite glad.
'Well,' I thought as I rose to take them. 'it is no use sitting mooning here by the fire; it will take half an hour to walk to the railway station, and I must be there by nine o'clock,' Nothing looks more desolate than a country railway station in the midst of a great common like ours, and nothing is more dismal than to have to walk to it by night over marshy sward, where the moon sees her face fifty times in as many yards, in the round holes made by the feet of cows and horses, and filled with rain-water. This very lot, Orris, was mine; it was also my lot to be wet through, and to have my umbrella turned inside out, while the rain splashed into my eyes and ears, and the wind blew off my hat.
The shrill whistle of the coming train was in my ears before I reached the station and ran up the steps, one, two, three I seemed an unaccountably long time running up those steps; there were assuredly twenty of them, and I was sure there used to be only three or four.
And the door!--surely it could not be the right door; and, moreover, it would not open Nothing could exceed my perplexity and bewilderment. I could not, by any contrivance, get this door open, nor find my way into the place At last, it being pitch dark, I began to feel round the wall with my hands. What a size it seemed! What with the wind and the rain, my fear of being late, and my perplexity, I got so stupid, that it must have been at least ten minutes before I found a door, and pushing it open--
'Why, this is a palace!' I exclaimed, 'and I am either dreaming or bewitched '
At. last I opened one eye, and it rested on the following advertisement, which was printed on the wall:
'Take Notice-Luminous apparel being now so cheap as to bring abundance of light within the reach of all classes, the proprietors of this railway declare it to be unlawful to burn atmospheric air in any of their carriages; and to ensure safety and comfort to all, particularly in the submarine tunnels, they give notice that no person shall travel on any of their lines without a cloak which emits sufficient light to read by, or at least a cap, the halo round which is three feet in diameter.
'NB-TO prevent danger, and also smoke and ashes, the proprietors give notice to persons going round the world, that they allow nothing but water to be used in the carriages as an article of fuel
'Signed on behalf of the Directors
'THOMAS JONES.
'February Ist, 1972
'Nineteen hundred and seventy-two!' I exclaimed aloud; 'that accounts for all these marvellous changes. I have, by some unaccountable means, stepped forward into the middle of the twentieth century. What an extraordinary circumstance! I'll buy a luminous cap, and take a trip in this railway.'
Well, I wandered about a long time perfectly dumbfoundered At last I came to another door, and having pushed it open, I found myself in an office more elegant than the drawing-room of a duchess, and half filled with people, whose dress was beyond everything remarkable; for they all wore luminous clothes
'Well, my fine fellow,' I said to myself, 'you've got yourself into a pretty scrape now, wet, dirty, and dull as you are= to intrude among princes and princesses with your dripping umbrella '
I then got into a passage, Orris, which was superbly illuminated but I could see no lamps, and it seemed to me (don't laugh) that the stones themselves were giving out light.
Not to be tedious. I sat hidden there all night, and in the morning I procured a cap and a ticket, and entered a carriage, resolving to go to London.
'Now, ladies and gentlemen,' cried a cheerful voice, 'who is for the subterranean line to New York?' Off moved a considerable portion of the crowd, and the door was scarcely shut upon them when a lady with a child in her hand stepped up to the last speaker and enquired, 'What time does the next three penny train start for Mount Vesuvius?'
'Not for half an hour, ma*am.'
'Half an hour! how late that will make us! I had better perhaps go round by Cairo, and take the old balloon track back to Italy.'
'A good plan madam ' was the reply; 'it will save seven minutes '
I shut my eyes, and put my fingers into my ears lest I should hear any more, and shrank back in the last stage of imbecile amazement. 'London' was written on my ticket; London I had repeatedly asked for, but when in ten minutes we stopped, and the men at the carrriage doors cried out 'Any lady or gentleman for London'-just as if London had been some second-rate provincial town. I laughed in their faces, for I knew very well it was not London Nevertheless, I got out, and began to look about me; 'for one thing In this twentieth century,' I thought, 'is just as strange as another.'
No, it was not London in which I then found myself; not the London arr, nor the London aspect; the atmosphere was not only clear as noonday In Italy, but there was a balmy warmth in the sunshine, and the whole place was fresh and breezy What a city! How shall I describe its dazzling transcendent splendour?
It was one vast collection of palaces, built of something transparent, and reflecting the sunbeams. In spite of the traffic that went on, there was no lack of space, there was no dirt, no smoke, and the wheels moved with scarcely any noise. Large trees grew before these palaces, and partly shaded them; numerous birds fluttered in the branches; people were passing rapidly to and fro, with fresh cheerful faces and exquisitely beautiful garments; but I saw no beggars, nothing squalid, nor any appearance of over-population or extreme poverty.
I wandered on among these people At last I came to a place open like a garden, and verdant with turf. I thought perhaps this might have been the site of Hyde Park; and seeing an old gentleman seated under some trees, I went up to him and said, 'Excuse the curiosity of a stranger, and be pleased to tell him whether this city really is London.'
'This city!' he replied, taking off his spectacles. 'Yes, undoubtedly this crry rs London, and a very fine place still, sir, to my old-fashioned notion, though several other cities m these dominions now far surpass it. '
'Surpass It!' I exclaimed; 'can anything earthly surpass this collected multitude of palaces-this noiseless swarming of cheerful thousands-these carriages gliding so swiftly without visible means of motion?'
The old gentleman looked at me with astonishment So much did he seem amazed that I felt compelled to tell him my story, and how I had been propelled into the middle of a succeeding century
He evidently believed my tale (more than you will do. Orris), and answered politely, 'Ah, that accounts for your surprise. Your lot was cast in very barbarous days, a dark age for civilization; in fact, while slavery and warfare still existed, what could one expect?'
'They are done away with, then?' I interrupted.
'About sixty years ago,' he replied, 'by consent of all nations: the former was allowed to be unjust even in your day; and for the last, its folly happily became evident to those who had never considered its wickedness. '
'Indeed!' said I; 'and pray what is that exceedingly high spire which looms in the distance?'
'That,' he answered, 'is the. great watchlight of London. A century ago, the sreets were lighted by thousands of yellow, dingy gas lamps; we now substitute one enormous jet of pure white light, which shoots upwards of a mile high, and illuminates the whole city effectually Our houses are, as you observe, semi-transparent-they are thus filled with light within also; and as our atmosphere used formerly to be proverbially cold and foggy, a company was formed for superseding the use of coal and all other combustible materials (which were not only productive of smoke, but of danger), by warming the whole city from below '
'From below?' I enquired, doubtful of his meaning
'From below,' he replied calmly 'You were probably aware, even in the nineteenth century, that the interior of the earth was of a very high temperature. '
'Yes,' I replied, 'we knew that if iron existed forty or fifty miles below the surface, it must always be in a state of fusion.'
'Exactly so,' he answered 'it was however not certainly known, though it had been conjectured before your day> that the earth was hollow-in short, that there was a central cavity. Well, sir, it was found that the crust was particularly thin under one part of these dominions, namely, under the county of Devon. A shaft was therefore sunk, and by that means we can procure as much heat as we desire '
'The differing thickness of the crust accounts then for difference of climate under the same latitude?' I observed
'You are quite right,' he answered. 'it does In Kerguelen's Land, fifty degrees south latitude, human life can hardly be sustained during the winter, as your contemporaries found to their cost, when they sailed in search of the magnetic poles; yet in nearness to the terrestrial pole it is equal to Greenwich. The crust of the earth is there remarkably thick.'
'Then the change you have made in your climate is the reason why those tall palms and other tropical trees grow so freely?'
'Of course,' he answered; 'we know better now than to cut down forests. These trees were transplanted from Central America, where they were very much in the way of the new Irish metropolis. Being very high, they shade the tops of the houses well; also the ordinary oaks and elms of the country, which would otherwise receive too much light in the night.'
I was silent, for at that moment music began to sound from within a building near at hand. We heard it so perfectly well that there was no need to go inside. It was part of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata that was played, and when it ceased I exclaimed with delight, 'At least you have the same music that I have been accustomed to hear '
'Ah, yes,' he answered, and sighed; 'of course no more music will ever be written now.'
'Why not?' I exclaimed in astonishment
'Why not?' he repeated 'Why, because, as we can have the perfect result, there is no encouragement to master the science; it is a lost art, sir, already '
'I don't understand you,' I replied.
'It's fixed,' he answered, as if he thought that expression could explain his meaning, and at the same instant a woman's voice was heard, a full rich voice that I thought I had heard before.
'Why that is Titiens!' I exclaimed, looking at the old man with a severe expression 'I know the voice-I heard her sing that very song in 1870.'
'Very likely,' was his quiet answer 'It was fixed shortly after that date.' And then I heard two or three other voices that were equally familiar to me.
'So this is all a delusion,' I exclaimed, 'and I am in my own country after all. I'll go and look at the singers '
'Sit down,' replied the old man, with an air of decision and reproof. 'You don't suppose surely that those people who used to play and who used to sing a hundred years ago are really there?'
"What is THERE then?' I enquired, quite breathless with astonishment
He answered that he would explain the matter to me in two minutes and he began to describe what was evidently some great invention m acoustics, which, he said (confusing his century with mine), 'you are going to find out very shortly'; but he used so many strange words that I stopped him, and said I could not understand.
He tried again, but with no better success
'Well, at least,' he said, 'you know something of the simple beginnings of photography?'
I replied that I did
'Photography,' he remarked, 'presents a visible image: cannot you imagine something analogous to it which might present an audible image? The difference really is that the whole of the photograph is always present to the eye, but the acoustigraph only
in successive portions. The song was sung and the symphony played at first, and it recorded them, and gave them out in one simultaneous horrible crash; then, when we had once got them fixed, science soon managed as it were to stretch the image-and now we can elongate it as much as we please.'
'This is very queer,' I exclaimed 'DO you mean to tell me that these notes and these voices are only the ghosts of sounds?'
'Not in any other sense,' he answered, 'than you might call a photograph the ghost of sight But really,' he continued rather impatiently, 'I hardly know how to converse with a man who does not understand the common words of his own language.'
'I beg your pardon.' I interrupted with some heat, but at the same moment I observed that his attention was caught by my waistcoat, and when I saw his interest in it I felt how useless an disputing would be ' y
'That's a watch that I see you wearing, is it not?' he said, still looking amused
'Yes, of course,' I answered, drawingit from my pocket,and laying it in his palm.
'Ah, indeed! yes, so it is,' he exclaimed. How ingenious! it's actually ticking!'
I could not help laughing.'You don't use watches now, then?' I remarked.
'No.' he replied; 'those little mechanical inventions are so incomplete and so inconvenient, I should nor wonder if this wants winding up every night. '
'Yes, it does: what do you use then?'
He shook his head, and intimated that if I could not understand a thing so simple as their music, he despaired of explaining more difficult matters.
'Well,' I remarked, 'let us talk of something else then There is another point which was a great problem to my generation, and which I wish you would clear up Pray what do you do with your surplus popularion?'
'Surplus!' he rpeated, 'surplus! Why we have only just enough people here, now the world is so equally populated The whole of North America is overspread with nations descended from Europeans. and when once the vulger error, that Central Africa was one vast desert, had been exploded, thousands flocked thither from this country. We have found out a method for propelling rainclouds in that direction, so that they are seldom in want either of shade or water
'And your poor? I enquired.
'Why, the difference of intelligence, as well as of physical strength,' he answered, 'will always ensure that some be far poorer than others, but I am happy to say that not many members of the human family are now destitute of food and clothing-the former especially is se extremely cheap. '
'How does that happen?' I asked; 'it is the last thing I should have expected to hear. These are indeed wonderful changes! They make me feel extremely sad under the prospect of returning to my town century, which I used to be so proud of.'
'The cheapness of food arises partly from the sea-drags,' he replied.
'Sea-drags!' I exclaimed; 'what are they?'
'In 1850 and thereabouts,' he replied obligingly, 'food was extremely dear; a dish of fish commonly cost 5s.'
'I am quite aware of that,' I answered, laughing.
'Well,' he replied, 'shortly after the middle of that benighted century, people got tired of just dipping a hook or dropping a net into the sea, and taking up only what happened to pass it-they thought the sea had much better be dragged just like a pond, and Government constructed a series of nets reaching from Dover to Calais, which could be opened at intervals for ships tosail through. Similar nets were then spread from Aberdeen to Bergen, and by means of swift steamers dragged southward to within four miles of the others, the space became solid from the vast number of fish enclosed. A large famiiy could be fed for two days on turbot for the sum of one halfpenny, and all other fish was in proportion. We found means for preserving it for any length of time quite fresh, and repeated these sea-drags all over the world at the right seasons, and at no other times. By this plan we not only secure as much good fish as we can use for food, but we can catch and destroy the bad, and those kinds which prey on the others.'
'A brilliant invention!' I exclamed. 'Pray who was the happy person to think of it first?'
'His name is not known,' replied my informant, 'but I believe his invention was first given to the world in a small book for children. Government soon adopted it, but I have not heard that they offered him any reward.'
'It is difficult for me,' I remarked, looking round, 'to conjecture what has become of old London-all the buildings, factories, shops, streets, and squares that I remember.'
'Gone, sit-levelled te the ground by common consent--materials under your feet-we found out better ones, which have superseded them.'
'What, all gone! are even the bridges gone?' I exclaimed, shocked to think how the labours of my contemporaries had been cleared from the face of the earth, and thenselves forgotten. 'What changes!'
'The bridges? Oh yes, they are gone some time ago. We thought the Thames was unwholesome, so we arched the whole of it over-indeed, we did not want it when once we had discovered the means of sailing in the air. But I believe I must leave you; I ordered my dinner to be ready at one. I live in Madeira. Good day.'
He left me, and as I sat in the sunshine in that beautiful London, my heart was so oppressed with the thought of my despised generation--all its toils, so many and great, useless to those who came after it--all its inventions superseded or forgotten--all its struggles made light of--that I covered my face with my hands, and gave way to a passion of tears. I looked back to the stormy wind and rain during which I had stepped out of my century. I thought they were more congenial to me than this constant sunshine; and though these great changes were almost all for the better, I shrank from them with a painful sense of desolateness and isolation.
I heard a woman's voice speaking close to me, and asking why I wept. I looked up, and saw a young mother with an infant in her arms Her face was so candid and kind that I told her my sorrow for all these changes, and the sweeping away of everything belonging to my century; then I added--'Nevertheless, I perceive that though all else may have changed, no change has come over the tenderness of woman and her kind compassion '
She looked surprised, but did nor answer She had seated herself near me on the grass, and while I remained moody and miserable, she suddenly began to sing to me and to her child, and soothe our common humanity with a song of the twentieth century
The city, he saith, is fairer far
Than one which stood of old;
It gleams in the light all crimson bright
With shifting glimmers of gold
Where be the homes my fathers built,
The houses where they prayed?
I see in no sod the paths they trod
Nor the stones my fathers laid
On the domes they spread, the roofs they reared,
Has passed the levelling tide,
My fathers lie low, and their sons outgrow
The bounds of their skill and pride
Shifting, sweeping, change,
It plays with man's endeavour,
They carved these names grown strange,
And they said 'Abide for ever '
'The city, I say, lieth far away
Whereto no change may come;
It has rays manifold of crimson and gold,
But I cannot count their sum
They sigh no more by its happier shore
Who wander, foreboding not,
Or waning away of a changeful day,
Or changing of life and lot.
They dream not there on earth's changing face,
Or mutable wind and sea-
Thou that art changeless, grant me a place
In that far city with Thee!
There record my name,
Father! forget me never,
For thy thought is still the same,
Yesterday, today, and for ever.'
I was going to tell you, Orris, how I got back to my own century, and what I thought of it,but there is not time. Another day perhaps I shall have more leisure. In the meanwhile, I remain, your affectionate cousin,
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