"Edward Bellamy. Lookimg Backward From 2000 to 1887" - читать интересную книгу автора

Chapter 5


When, in the course of the evening the ladies retired, leaving
Dr. Leete and myself alone, he sounded me as to my disposition
for sleep, saying that if I felt like it my bed was ready for me; but
if I was inclined to wakefulness nothing would please him better
than to bear me company. "I am a late bird, myself," he said,
"and, without suspicion of flattery, I may say that a companion
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 acquired 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