
    »Yes, May 30th, 1887.«
    My companion regarded me musingly for some moments. Then he observed, »And
you tell me that even then there was no general recognition of the nature of the
crisis which society was nearing? Of course, I fully credit your statement. The
singular blindness of your contemporaries to the signs of the times is a
phenomenon commented on by many of our historians, but few facts of history are
more difficult for us to realize, so obvious and unmistakable as we look back
seem the indications, which must 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 valuble vindication of Storiot, whose account of your era has been
generally thought exaggerated in its picture of the gloom and confusion of men's
minds. That a period of transition like that should be full of excitement and
agitation was indeed to be looked for; but seeing how plain was the tendency of
the forces in operation, it was natural to believe that hope rather than fear
would have been the prevailing temper
