Backward" upon the progress of the last one hundred.

That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose
interest in the subject shall incline them to overlook the
deficiencies of the treatment is the hope in which the author
steps aside and leaves Mr. Julian West to speak for himself.



Chapter 1


I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857.
"What!" you say, "eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He
means nineteen fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is
no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the
26th, one day after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I
first breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I assure the reader,
was at that remote period marked by the same penetrating
quality characterizing it in the present year of grace, 2000.

These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially
when I add that I am a young man apparently of about thirty
years of age, that no person can be blamed for refusing to read
another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his
credulity. Nevertheless I earnestly assure the reader that no
imposition is intended, and will undertake, if he shall follow me
a few pages, to entirely convince him of this. If I may, then,
provisionally assume, with the pledge of justifying the assumption,
that I know better than the reader when I was born, I will