more interesting
than yourself could scarcely be imagined. It is decidedly not often
that one has a chance to converse with a man of the nineteenth
century."

Now I had been looking forward all the evening with some dread to the
time when I should be alone, on retiring for the night. Surrounded by
these most friendly strangers, stimulated and supported by their
sympathetic interest, I had been able to keep my mental balance. Even
then, however, in pauses of the conversation I had had glimpses, vivid
as lightning flashes, of the horror of strangeness that was waiting to
be faced when I could no longer command diversion. I knew I could not
sleep that night, and as for lying awake and thinking, it argues no
cowardice, I am sure, to confess that I was afraid of it. When, in
reply to my host's question, I frankly told him this, he replied that
it would be strange if I did not feel just so, but that I need have no
anxiety about sleeping; whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give
me a dose which would insure me a sound night's sleep without fail.
Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with the feeling of an old
citizen.

"Before I acquire that," I replied, "I must know a little more about
the sort of Boston I have come back to. You told me when we were upon
the house-top that though a century only had elapsed since I fell
asleep, it had been marked by greater changes in the conditions of
humanity than many a previous millennium. With the city before me I
could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of
the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject
is doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for
the labor question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth
century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to devour
society, because the answer was not forthcoming. It is well worth
sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if,
indeed, you have found it yet."

"As no such thing as the labor question is known nowadays," replied
Dr. Leete, "and there is no way in which it could arise, I suppose we
may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved
being devoured if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple.
In fact, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to
solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The
solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution wh