also have come under your eyes, of the transformation about to
come to pass. I should be interested, Mr. West, if you would
give me a little more definite idea of the view which you and
men of your grade of intellect took of the state and prospects of
society in 1887. You must, at least, have realized that the
widespread industrial and social troubles, and the underlying
dissatisfaction of all classes with the inequalities of society, and
the general misery of mankind, were portents of great changes of
some sort."

"We did, indeed, fully realize that," I replied. "We felt that
society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift.
Whither it would drift nobody could say, but all feared the
rocks."

"Nevertheless," said Dr. Leete, "the set of the current was
perfectly perceptible if you had but taken pains to observe it,
and it was not toward the rocks, but toward a deeper channel."

"We had a popular proverb," I replied, "that `hindsight is
better than foresight,' the force of which I shall now, no doubt,
appreciate more fully than ever. All I can say is, that the
prospect was such when I went into that long sleep that I should
not have been surprised had I looked down from your house-top
to-day on a heap of charred and moss-grown ruins instead of this
glorious city."

Dr. Leete had listened to me with close attention and nodded
thoughtfully as I finished speaking. "What you have said," he
observed, "will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of