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Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy
page 24 of 281 (08%)
When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had
been lighted artificially when I was awake before. My mysterious
host was sitting near. He was not looking at me when I opened
my eyes, and I had a good opportunity to study him and
meditate upon my extraordinary situation, before he observed
that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and my mind
perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred
and thirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered
condition, I had accepted without question, recurred to me now
only to be rejected as a preposterous attempt at an imposture,
the motive of which it was impossible remotely to surmise.

Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account
for my waking up in this strange house with this unknown
companion, but my fancy was utterly impotent to suggest more
than the wildest guess as to what that something might have
been. Could it be that I was the victim of some sort of
conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet, if human lineaments
ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my side,
with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to any scheme
of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I
might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the
part of friends who had somehow learned the secret of my
underground chamber and taken this means of impressing me
with the peril of mesmeric experiments. There were great
difficulties in the way of this theory; Sawyer would never have
betrayed me, nor had I any friends at all likely to undertake such
an enterprise; nevertheless the supposition that I was the victim
of a practical joke seemed on the whole the only one tenable.
Half expecting to catch a glimpse of some familiar face grinning
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