am been the reality, and this fair reality the dream; better
your part pleading for crucified humanity with a scoffing generation,
than here, drinking of wells you digged not, and eating of trees whose
husbandmen you stoned;" and my spirit answered, "Better, truly."

When at length I raised my bowed head and looked forth from the
window, Edith, fresh as the morning, had come into the garden and was
gathering flowers. I hastened to descend to her. Kneeling before her,
with my face in the dust, I confessed with tears how little was my
worth to breathe the air of this golden century, and how infinitely
less to wear upon my breast its consummate flower. Fortunate is he
who, with a case so desperate as mine, finds a judge so merciful.

POSTSCRIPT.

THE RATE OF THE WORLD'S PROGRESS.

_To the Editor of the Boston Transcript_: The Transcript of March 30,
1888, contained a review of _Looking Backward_, in response to which I
beg to be allowed a word. The description to which the book is
devoted, of the radically new social and industrial institutions and
arrangements supposed to be enjoyed by the people of the United States
in the twentieth century, is not objected to as depicting a degree of
human felicity and moral development necessarily unattainable by the
race, provided time enough had been allowed for its evolution from the
present chaotic state of society. In failing to allow this, the
reviewer thinks that the author has made an absurd mistake, which
seriously detracts from the value of the book as a work of realistic
imagination. Instead of placing the realization of the ideal social
state a scant fifty years ahead, it is suggested that he should have
made his figure seventy-five centuries. There is certainly a large
discrepancy between seventy-five centuries and fifty years, and if the
reviewer is correct in his estimate of the probable rate of human
progress, the outlook of the world is decidedly discouraging. But is
he right? I think not.

_Looking Backward_, although in form a fanciful romance, is intended,
in all seriousness, as a forecast, in accordance with the principles
of evolution, of the next stage in the industrial and social
development of humanity, especially in this country; and no part of it
is believed by the author to be better supported by the indications of
probability than the implied prediction that the dawn of the new era
is already near at hand, and that the full day will swiftly fol