"Of what year?" I feebly echoed at last.

"Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that
I shall be able to tell you how long you have slept."

"It was the year 1887," I said.

My companion insisted that I should take another draught
from the glass, and felt my pulse.

"My dear sir," he said, "your manner indicates that you are a
man of culture, which I am aware was by no means the matter
of course in your day it now is. No doubt, then, you have
yourself made the observation that nothing in this world can be
truly said to be more wonderful than anything else. The causes
of all phenomena are equally adequate, and the results equally
matters of course. That you should be startled by what I shall
tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that you will not
permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance is
that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition
seems not greatly different from that of one just roused from a
somewhat too long and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth
day of September in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly
one hundred and thirteen years, three months, and eleven days."

Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at
my companion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming
very drowsy, went off into a deep sleep.