plied angrily, "as I may have to
prove if this jest is carried much farther."

"I beg, sir," was my companion's response, "that you will not allow
yourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick,
lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of my
statements, should be too great."

The tone of concern, mingled with commiseration, with which he said
this, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hot words,
strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with an
extraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights of
stairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere on
the house-top. "Be pleased to look around you," he said, as we reached
the platform, "and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenth
century."

At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees
and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous
blocks but set in larger or smaller inclosures, stretched in every
direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with
trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late
afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural
grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every
side. Surely I had never seen this city nor one comparable to it
before. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward.
That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it not the sinuous
Charles? I looked east; Boston harbor stretched before me within its
headlands, not one of its green islets missing.

I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigious
thing which had befallen me.

Chapter 4

I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me very
giddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me a strong arm as
he conducted me from the roof to a roomy apartment on the upper floor
of the house, where he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of good
wine and partaking of a light repast.

"I think you are going to be all right now," he said cheerily. "I
should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your
position if your course, while perfectly excusable under the
circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess," he added
laughing, "I was a little apprehensive at one time that I should
undergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in the nineteenth
century, if I di