who had lived in those cruel, insensate days, what had I done to bring them to
an end? I had been every whit as indifferent to the wretchedness of my brothers,
as cynically incredulous of better things, as besotted a worshipper of Chaos and
Old Night, as any of my fellows. So far as my personal influence went, it had
been exerted rather to hinder than to help forward the enfranchisement of the
race which was even then preparing. What right had I to hail a salvation which
reproached me, to rejoice in a day whose dawning I had mocked?
    »Better for you, better for you,« a voice within me rang, »had this evil
dream 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,