a person more or less entering the world, however he got in,
would not be noticed in the unorganized throng of men, and might make a place
for himself anywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody
is a part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside the
system, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way to get in, except to
be born in or to come in as an emigrant from some other system.«
    Dr. Leete laughed heartily.
    »I admit,« he said, »that our system is defective in lacking provision for
cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated additions to the world except
by the usual process. You need, however, have no fear that we shall be unable to
provide both a place and occupation for you in due time. You have as yet been
brought in contact only with the members of my family, but you must not suppose
that I have kept your secret. On the contrary, your case, even before your
resuscitation and vastly more since, has excited the profoundest interest in the
nation. In view of your precarious nervous condition, it was thought best that I
should take exclusive charge of you at first, and that you should, through me
and my family, receive some general idea of the sort of world you had come back
to before you began to make the acquaintance generally of its inhabitants. As to
finding a function for you in society, there was no hesitation as to what that
would be. Few of us have it in our power to confer so great a service on the
nation as you will be able to when you leave my roof, which, however, you must
not think of doing for a good time yet.«
    »What can I possibly do?« I asked. »Perhaps you imagine I have some trade,
or art, or special skill. I assure you I have none whatever. I never earned a
dollar in my life, or did an hour's work. I am strong, and might be a common
laborer, but nothing more.«
    »If that were the most efficient service you were able to render the nation,
you would find that avocation considered quite as respectable as any other,«
replied Dr. Leete, »but you can do something else better. You are easily the
master of all our historians on questions relating to the social condition of
the latter part of the nineteenth century, to us one of the most absorbingly
interesting periods of history; and whenever