FIFTY YEARS HENCE.
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
—Locksley Hall.
That portion of the public which honors me by perusing what I have been fortunate enough to learn concerning the future of the inhabitants of this planet, half a century from this Christmas of 1892, will naturally, as my name is unknown to either fame or science, wonder on what grounds I presume on so bold an undertaking; perhaps what manner of man I might be.
But when I positively disclaim any merit or virtue as a prophet, and state that I am merely by chance the medium by which a portion of the veil is torn from the future, it is enough that I describe myself, as referred to in sundry recitals, as Francis Ainsworth, of the City and County of New York. Perhaps I might add that I am by choice an electrician, by birth a Pennsylvanian, in age twenty-one, and by no fault of my own still unmarried. For some years I have been endeavoring to save enough to enable me to marry my lifelong friend Estelle Morton, of Philadelphia; but as I have a family of small sisters to support out of my salary and what I can earn by extra work, the period of our engagement has been prolonged beyond the time of even our least sanguine calculations. Nearly all my evenings are spent at home, within the sound of the Jefferson Market clock; for I have chosen the Ninth Ward because it is even yet an American stronghold, because it is convenient to my place of business, and because it is better than it looks, which is preferable to looking better than facts warrant.
Once a month, however, I am sure to be at the meeting of my Masonic lodge in the Temple, at Twenty-third Street; for I feel that there I am in contact with both the living present and the dead past; and the Mystic Tie seems well worth critical study.
One evening as I was about to enter the side portal on the Avenue, a ragged newsboy offered, at more than the regular price, some “extras” containing an account of some great financial upheaval in Europe. The man by my side objected to paying an exorbitant price for the hastily-issued and noisily-cried sheet, saying to his companion: “Now, if he would bring me to-morrow’s news, Trask, I wouldn’t mind paying a good round sum for it.” The auburn-haired Past Master, who is seamed with the scars of battle in “The Street,” replied, more in earnest than in jest: “I would readily pay a thousand dollars for a knowledge for what will happen to-morrow, and a million if it were exclusive.” “On that basis,” said a man ahead, who was just stepping into the elevator, “what would it be worth to know what is to happen fifty years hence?” “Oh,” said Trask, “I suppose it would be reasonably safe to offer any price at all for the performance of an impossibility; and for that matter, any one impossibility is just as unreasonable to ask as any other. It’s hard enough to be sure of what happened fifty years ago, let alone diving into the news of fifty years hence.”
“It is not so impossible as you think,” quietly remarked a gentleman at my side, who seemed a stranger to all of the rest. “It can be done, if one has patience, judgment, time and means.”
As we meet all sorts of people in the world at large, it is not unreasonable to expect a fair variety among Free Masons, who, while held to a uniform belief in certain things, and to unvarying actions in others, have the freest living, compatible with a charitable and upright walk, in all others; consequently, even so radical a remark as that, and even one so gravely uttered, exacted no comment, and scarcely a glance from any, other than one of courteous recognition that the speaker had addressed his companions.
He was a distinguished looking man, even in a Masonic temple, where men of commanding presence, men of dignified bearing, men of venerable appearance and men of philosophical habit, are by no means uncommon. Although but of medium height, his carriage was such as to give him the appearance of a tall man. His eyes were dark, full, luminous, and wide apart; the nose strong, straight and with large nostrils; the mouth small, firm and flexible. A still luxuriant head of wavy white hair, long white mustaches, and beard falling full and untrimmed upon his breast, imparted a distinguished and venerable appearance. His erect form was slender although evidently well-muscled, even at his age, which seemed seventy or thereabouts. His dress was neat and inconspicuous; the materials evidently of excellent quality, although of a fashion long gone out of date.
We entered the lodge-room almost together, and like myself, he took a seat near the door.
To the work for this evening there was lent unusual interest by the presence of a Masonic celebrity, revered in two hemispheres, who had been invited to give us the benefit of the stores of learning for the possession of which he was noted, and of the wise counsel which he ever gave to those younger and less well-informed in Masonic matters.
The eloquent speaker having held us spell-bound by his masterful presentation of the teachings of symbolic Masonry, in a flight of oratory carried us back to the days and works of Solomon the King, of Hiram Abiff, and of that other Hiram, King of Tyre; and in the first great Temple which those early Master Masons builded twenty-nine centuries previously, traced for us, in form, size and position of timber and metal—in tool, and time, and work, noble lessons of manhood and virtue; of brotherhood and helpfulness; of contemplation and self-restraint, until each one addressed felt that he, too, was proud of being a Free and Accepted Master Mason, and emulous of being a credit to his ancient craft.
In the building of that majestic, beauteous, mystic Temple,
“No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!”
His descriptive powers, his witching imageries, held us spell-bound. But at one point the speaker paused, saying that here there seemed to be something well worth knowing, but which the centuries had hidden. It was evidently replete with symbolism of highest order; but the key to its mysteries was unfortunately lost. Some day, perhaps, the light of investigation might penetrate the gloom in which the mystery was enwrapped—if, indeed, those better versed in the craft had not already solved the interesting problem.
The point referred to was one of those in which occult ratio and mystic beauty of proportion unfold on every hand new virtuous teachings. It was so rich in reminder and suggestion, no matter from what side viewed, that its consideration roused the enthusiasm of all hearers.
When the speaker ceased, the quiet little gentleman next me seemed as one filled with inspiration.
“... With grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat.”
In a well-modulated voice which had evidently been one of great power and beauty, he asked permission to endeavor to cast some light, however feeble, upon so interesting a subject. Something in the quiet dignity of his bearing, in the classic precision of his diction, and the graceful modulation of his voice, attracted all with more than usual force to the new speaker.
“... his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or Summer’s noontide air.”
He said that in order to find the fullest measure of symbolism in this, as in other Temple mysteries, we must go further than the Temple walls and question the inner chambers of the pyramids—we must ask of the Shepherd Kings what Solomon and the two Hirams told them not. The point was beautifully elucidated both in itself and in its relation to others, so that its increased richness of allusion and teaching became at once surprisingly manifest.
Evidently all present felt that a master of the mysteries of the buried centuries was among us—and in gesture and expression all asked “the old man eloquent” to continue, and to give his views upon the work of those Shepherd Kings to whom he had so appositely alluded.
So far as I can remember the facts which he laid before us, and fill up gaps in my memory, by reference to standard authorities, he spoke as follows:—
“The Hykshos or Shepherd Kings came suddenly into this land of mystery; came with a purpose, which purpose accomplished, they departed speedily. That purpose, for which they travelled so far, was to build the great pyramid, a unique, symbolic, and prophetic structure, ‘star-y-pointing,’ raised on a site chosen from the whole surface of the earth by reason of its unique, its solitary fitness. That building, type of the ever-during gates of heaven, wonderfully symbolized the mystic wisdom of its time; imperishably recorded the principal facts in metrology, meteorology and astronomy, and prophetically embodied the discoveries of ages then to come. Temple and town have gone to the ground, but it has endured. It was the precursor of the great symbolic Temple of Solomon, built by the descendants of those shepherd builders, students of the heaven’s wide pathless way, and which although destroyed, could be reconstructed by the measures and dimensions familiar to our mystic craft, and recorded in that great book of symbols, the Bible.
“Now, the dimensions and rhythmic proportions on which Solomon, on which Hiram, King of Tyre, and on which Hiram Abiff builded the wondrous Temple, were enshrined in the Great Pyramid just five hundred years before.
“The Temple diagram, conceived under the starry cope of heaven, is made by drawing on a diameter of 1,000 inches, a circle, about which and in which is described a square, again a circle and a square circumscribed. The areas of the various squares and circles here drawn, equal those of the porch of Solomon’s Temple (125,000 square inches), of the holy place (500,000 square inches) and the Holy of Holies; the latter of which is encircled in a nest of circles and squares and the original radius of which, five hundred inches, was the whole length of the Holy of Holies itself.
“Now let us retrace our steps through five centuries and enter the great monument of Chem, to obey the prophetic mandate of the angel to the holy St. John, and ‘arise and measure the temple and its altar.’
“In the king’s chamber the volume of a certain portion of the room equals fifty times that of the coffer—the relation of the ark to the brazen sea in the Temple. Drawing the diagram of the pyramid to a scale having as the height, the mean height of the king’s chamber (232.52 inches), the magistral line is 412.13 inches, or the length of the chambers. The base of the triangle is the number of days in a year, 365.24 inches, and the radius of that circle having an area of 365.24 inches squared, is 206.06 inches, or the width of the chamber. Constructing a pyramid triangle of height equal to the width of the chamber, the magistral line of the completed pyramid is the year number 365.24 inches—the perimeter of the base, double the two other important chamber dimensions—the length, 412.13 inches, and the second height, 235.24 inches. The entire pyramid design comports with that of the chamber, and those of the coffer and of the ante-chamber, which is in fact the ante-chamber to modern civilization.
“Leave the great step at the southern end of the Grand Gallery—a yard high and a yard plus a cubit wide—and we find stretching across the ante-chamber a granite leaf, of two blocks slid in vertical grooves. On the upper of these blocks is the only ornament in the pyramid—a boss, nearly semi-circular in face—exactly an inch high and an inch in westerly displacement from the centre of the leaf. The cubic contents of this inch-high boss are one pint. Its volume of water weighs just one pound. The inch, the pint, the pound, so often changed, so often lost; restored by one method and verified after such restoration, by the boss on the leaf which bars the way in the ante-chamber! The base of the boss is a chord of five inches or a span; its centre one sacred cubit or five spans from the hidden end of the leaf. The top block, apparently irregular in upper outline, is 41.2 inches long, 15.7 wide, and 48.57 in mean height, giving a contents in cubic inches of 31,415.9-၊-, which contains the relation between the diameter and the circumference of a circle. The lower block has a contents of exactly one-fourth of the coffer, or an Anglo-Saxon ‘quarter’. On this leaf, by reference to the boss, we find also recorded or prophesied the twenty-four inch gauge and the three-foot rule, as well as that sacred cubit of twenty-five inches, which is commensurable with the polar diameter of the earth.
“The base of the boss is five, the central one of the nine digits, a number so hated by the Egyptians, even of the present day, as to be marked by them with a 0 on their watches—but the sacred number of the Shepherd Kings, who embodied it in the five-sided, five-angled, five-proportioned monument which they came so far to build, and which was the key to the proportions and dimensions of that Temple in which the five books of Moses were sacred to a people who left the land of their oppressors, five abreast, ‘with high hands,’ with outspread fingers, flaunting their number in the faces of the Egyptians, to whom it brought so much bad luck.
“From the Pentalpha or five-pointed star may be reproduced the pyramid and the Temple proportions and those of the perfect human body—for this being inscribed in a circle, the centre of the star and circle being at the pubis, the arms and legs spread out easily just reach the points of the star—the centre of the breast being midway from the pubis to the crown of the head, and the base of the knee-cap midway from the pubis to the sole of the foot. The pyramid diagram gives the correct proportions of the human body with equal exactness and detail.”
I felt attracted to this man who drew so freely from an apparently inexhaustible mental storehouse, and who so logically connected facts as to weave from mere numbers so wondrous a fabric; but I dared not intrude my callow personality upon one so well-rounded. As we went down the smooth stone steps, his foot slipped, and he would have fallen headlong had I not been fortunate enough to catch and support him. Even as it was, he wrenched his foot, so that he gladly accepted my proffered assistance to his car.
It turned out that he, too, went down town, although further than I; and we entered the same surface car. He honored me by a request for an exchange of cards; and on the one which he handed me I read the name “Roger Brathwaite”; no address being given, although I learned from him that he resided in one of those old wards, once fashionable, where still a few old-fashioned people of means live in commodious old dwellings, and refuse to be crowded out by factory and warehouse, be they never so lofty and noisy by day, never so lonely and gloomy by night.
Some three weeks later, I met Brathwaite in the street, and in walking with him, for a few blocks, learned that he had been a friend of my grandfather—whose name I bore in full. He told me that he had been inquiring concerning me, of my employers, and of others; and that he had had such good reports that he wished me to call upon him the next afternoon, at the address which he now gave, and where, he remarked, he wished to make a business proposition which might be to my advantage.
It is needless to say that before the hour appointed, I bent my steps towards the place of meeting.
The house was one of those ugly comfortable-looking four-story and basement brick structures, with generous doors and wide and abundant windows, which the wealthy New Yorker of three generations ago, be he merchant prince or landed proprietor, built for himself and intended for his descendants, but which have been crowded out of notice by towering factories, storehouses and tenement buildings. Its wide granite steps and curiously-wrought iron railings, its great doorway, upheld by pairs of fluted pillars enclosing narrow lights at each side of the silver-handled single door, and capped by a semi-circular transom, whispered of the quiet dignified early days of the century; while the puffing of the exhaust steam across the way, and the snarling and buzzing of the machinery in the piano factory next door, spoke of its noisy and commonplace close.
Musk-rose and woodbine formerly luxuriated in its garden; star-proof elms once threw blue-tinted moonlight shadows on its now-mellowing walls; and high-bred dames once trod with dainty feet its smooth and polished floors. The glory of the neighborhood, like that of Ichabod, had departed—but the scrupulous neatness of the old mansion stood out among the dirt and squalor of its surroundings.
In response to my ring, the door was opened by a grave and quiet maid-servant of the olden school; capped, aproned and slippered, with gray hairs thickly sprinkling the brown. On learning my name she directed me to ascend to the study in the fourth story, where I would have no difficulty in finding the master of the house.
As I passed up the wide staircase trod by so many feet now motionless, I could see through the open doors, as well as in all the halls, shelves upon shelves of closely-packed books, and long tables and racks in great numbers, laden with what seemed maps and charts of nothing in particular, or things in general. It was evident, however, that whatever archives these were, they were numerous, well arranged, and of great diversity of age and subject.
The fourth story reached, I found myself in a great loft-like apartment, covering nearly the entire floor, and filled, like those below it, with book-laden cases, and tables thickly strewn with charts and great portfolios.
My host received me with the grave sweet courtesy which sat so well upon him, and begged me to permit him for a few moments to put the finishing touches upon a piece of work, before entering upon the matter concerning which he had, as he put it, done himself the honor to ask me to confer with him.
“While I complete my work,” said he, “look about you. Note well my friends of all ages, in whose company I have passed many busy years. They are ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time.’ Around them, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, my pastime and my happiness have grown. Milton said: ‘A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life,’ and I have found it so. Browning wrote—and mark well that a hidden import lies in his words:
“‘Books are men of higher stature,
And the only men who speak aloud for future times to hear.’”
I availed myself of the opportunity to look about me, and as the charts seemed but a meaningless tangle of long and short lines of black and the three primary colors, parallel and interlacing, I betook myself to an inspection of the book-shelves, each plainly lettered with the class of its contents. I could see that the works here were mainly historical, and arranged in divisions corresponding to periods and epochs in the world’s history.
Here for instance in the section of Modern History, and in that division devoted to the Formation of Distinct Nationalities were Longman’s “Lectures on English History,” Michelet’s “History of France,” Brougham’s “England and France Under the House of Lancaster,” Edgar’s “Wars of the Roses,” Kirk’s “Charles the Bold,” and scores of other histories proper, to say nothing of Botta’s “Dante,” Campbell’s “Life of Petrarch,” and similar works throwing light on men and manners between 1300 and 1490 A. D. The shelves belonging to “The Age of the Great Discoveries” were loaded with Major’s “Life of Prince Henry of Portugal,” Irving’s “Life and Voyages of Columbus,” and “Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus,” Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” Ranke’s and D’Aubigné’s histories of the Reformation, Prescott’s “Conquests of Mexico and Peru,” and all those other standards which tell of men and events from 1490 to 1530. The system was perfect; the manner in which it was carried out, wonderful.
I had no time to observe more, for Brathwaite having completed some careful plotting upon a chart which covered a long table, rose and led me to a seat near his desk, where, his earnest eyes gleaming with a strange sense of power, his rich voice vibrant with magnetism, he thus addressed me:—
“The other evening you heard the comments of our brethren as to the great money value of a knowledge of the near future; but not one word was said as to what an incalculable boon to the human race would be the revelation of the general condition of men, morals, law, liberty, and all things great and small, at each decade yet to come. You may have heard me remark, almost unconsciously, that such knowledge of the future was not so impossible as one might think; and the exclamation may have impressed you, if at all, with an idea of the mental irresponsibility of the one who uttered it. But I think that I can convince you, who are the first to whom I have addressed myself on the subject save my dear wife—now gone before me—that my remark was not only compatible with the soundest mental powers, but warranted by a degree of special study and training, a duration of special application, far beyond the usual.
“I was long ago impressed with the idea that many of those long-past occurrences about which learned historians disagree, could be cleared up by the light of induction; that as like causes have ever produced like effects, any causes, however remote in time, might be deduced from their effects, if only the records were sufficiently full and accurate, and the method sufficiently philosophical and thorough. It seemed, for instance, unreasonable that so great discrepancies should exist as to names and arrangements of rulers, and commencement and duration of dynasties, of those very Hykshos, or Shepherd Kings, of whom I spoke the other night in those sacred precincts. Manetho (according to Josephus), states that they reigned five hundred and eleven years, but cites only reigns amounting to two hundred and sixty years; while Africanus makes the duration of those reigns two hundred and eighty-four years, and Eusebius one hundred and three. Africanus makes the Shepherds consist of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth dynasties, and to have ruled nine hundred and fifty-three years, but gives the names and reigns of only one, which he calls the fifteenth, while Eusebius claims it to have been the seventeenth. Bronsen makes their rule end 1639 B. C.; Lipsius, 1842 B. C.; yet if we place the discovered date of Thothmes III. (1445 B. C.) in his sixteenth year, the close of the Hykshos dominion must have been about 1500 B. C.
“In my early life I set about the task of reconciling these discrepancies by converging lines of testimony; and so satisfactory were the results, so unerringly was each cause deduced from its many effects, that I conceived the idea of not only reconciling historical discrepancies as to occurrences and motives, but reading the future by continuing each chain of reasoning into the time to come. In other words, if by my inductive method, more light is thrown on the occurrences in Babylon, Media, Lydia, Egypt, twenty-five centuries ago, than by the non-inductive method, upon those at Shiloh, but twenty-five years past, it should be safer to predict by it the outcomings of the next generation, than by the usual methods, those of the next spring or summer. I deemed that ‘by labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, that they should not willingly let it die.’ Each year that I continued my studies, which embraced not only the collection and assimilation of facts, but their classification and the formation of deductions therefrom, the more firmly I become impressed with the idea of turning the electric light of induction along the path of prophecy, rather than merely illuminating therewith the fogs of history.
“‘I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind,’
set about this problem. Ample means, an excellent constitution, and correct and regular habits, have enabled me to accomplish during the past fifty years—for through so long a time have I been striving for my object—much more than is given to most men to do, and more even than I had given myself reason to expect or hope. We now stand in ‘this narrow isthmus ’twixt two boundless seas, the past, the future, two eternities.’ I have explored them both.
“But I detect in your manner an impatience which I cannot condemn, and shall plunge at once into an explanation of my methods, leaving until later a statement of what I have been able to accomplish thereby.
“It has long been the custom of professional engineers to represent graphically on sheets of paper ruled in squares, various properties of matter under regularly-varying conditions. For instance, to show the electric conductivity of wire at various temperatures, horizontal strips represent degrees of temperature, and vertical strips, degrees of conductivity; and if a line connecting points corresponding to conductivity at various temperatures be convexly curved above, it shows that conductivity decreases more rapidly than temperature increases. If the line be straight, it shows that conductivity decreases in the same ratio as temperature increases. The use of several colored lines, or of solid and of variously broken or dotted lines, permits comparison of the conductivity of several metals or alloys.
“This, as a method of recording and comparing experiments, is quite convenient; but it is even more useful. The location of from three to ten points permits the experimenter to deduce accurately what would have been the results of other accurately-performed experiments under similar conditions. Whether the line is a straight one, or an hyperbola, or one expressed by some algebraical equation, the mean can be known from the extremes or one of the extremes deduced from the other extreme and the mean. In other words, in this principle lies the key to prophecy. For, given a mode of expressing social conditions, legal enactments, human emotions, extending through a sufficient period, and known with sufficient accuracy to be properly charted, the present may be made to throw light upon a past too dim, and past and present point with unerring finger to the future, be it near or distant.
“When Byron wrote ‘The best of prophets of the future is the past,’ he ‘builded better than he knew.’
“But that the scientific seer may surely venture on the task of piercing the fogs which screen the past from our curious eyes, or of lifting the veils which hide the future from our anxious gaze, the simple squares and lines of the engineer must be so developed and supplemented as to represent more than two sets of conditions at once. They must show simultaneously several influences which are silently making history. It is to the enlarged application of the principle of graphical representation, that the last ten years of a life, formerly spent in the accumulation and classification of recorded knowledge, have been devoted. How well I have succeeded, I shall shortly show you. But first I must tell you by what means I have triumphed over oblivion and set upon myself the crown of prophecy.
“In these charts and relief maps, horizontal distance represents time; vertical distance, space, or sections of country. Red, yellow, blue and black lines permit recording four social or other conditions at once, while elevation and degree of roughness of surface add two more to the number simultaneously expressible.
“As a simple instance, this chart is devoted to the Sacredness of the Marriage Relation, from the year one of the Christian era to the present day. The portions to the left indicate early periods, those in the centre, present time; those at the right, time to come; each decade being represented by one-half inch of length of the chart. The various strips are devoted to different geographical divisions; that given to our own country being sub-divided into strips corresponding to its various States and Territories. The depth of red tint shows the degree of respect or disrespect for woman; blue tints correspond to enactments rendering marriage more sacred, divorce more difficult, the rights of women more general and acknowledged. Thus we see in this blood-red quarter to the left, an indication of promiscuity in the sexual relation. The lighter red stands for polyandry, or that state in which the woman has several husbands, living peacefully together. This is due to a scarcity of women, owing to the female infants being exposed at birth or sold as slaves.
“Note that in Great Britain, in the time of Julius Caesar, this form prevailed; and that it continues up to the present day in the Neilgherry Hills, India, and with the Herero tribe of South Africa. It appears in greatest perfection in some tribes of Thibet, where all the brothers of a family have but one wife in common.
“Here among the Eskimos, Aleutians, and Kolushes of the north and northwest coasts of America, we have still a marked red stripe, due to the fact that among these tribes a married woman is the wife of all the married men of the tribe, and each married man is the husband of all the married women—which does not, however, prevent the distinctions between the married and unmarried being rigidly observed.
“This state is followed by polygamy, indicated by a lighter shade of red, and which accounts for this local patch in the Utah strip, nearly down to 1890.
“Monogamy is rare among the ruder races, but this strip of paler red in Ceylon is to represent the Veddahs, where each male takes but one wife, and is true to her alone until separated by death.
“Almost simultaneously with the fading in the red tint, which fading represents increasing respect for women, we have a deepening of the blue tint lines which stand for ecclesiastical and legal protection of the marriage relation and of the rights of woman. Thus we see the chart changing from deep red to reddish purple, from this through purple to bluish purple; and the future shows deep blue as indicating the absolute recognition, formal and social, of all woman’s claims to honor, protection, and property. See now, from the year 400 A. D. on to the right, a sudden deepening of the blue, indicating the canonical law pronouncing a marriage indissoluble—as is still the law in the Roman Catholic Church.
“Note here local differences of color due to the fact that among the Shawnee Indians the women, while the only drudges, yet own all the property; and that among the Osages of our Western plains the oldest daughter on her marriage comes into possession of all the family property.
“In our own country, see the extra blueness of South Carolina, which has no divorce laws; of Georgia, in which absolute divorce is granted only after the concurrent verdict of two juries, at different terms of the court; and of New York, where it is accorded for but one cause only—adultery. See how the blue is paled in the District of Columbia and in Wisconsin, where the granting of divorce for any cause is practically left to the discretion of the Court. See how feeble the blue in Illinois and in Rhode Island, yet note how it is overwhelmed by the other strips, so that it is safe to predict that by 1925 those States will have been compelled by pressure of public opinion to enact and enforce laws more thoroughly protecting women. This we must read in connection with the chart showing centralization of government and uniformity of legislation in America, and with that one showing the increase of Roman Catholicism in the State of Illinois, and in its neighbor Missouri.
“In the same way I here show graphically the evolution of recorded speech, from thought-writing by pictures—as practised among the American tribes, particularly those of Mexico and Central America, in China and the valley of the Nile—to sound-writing as first done by rebuses, and the cuneiform method of syllabic writing in the Valley of Mesopotamia; then alphabets proper, first non-phonetic as adopted by the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, and by ourselves; then phonetic, which the rapidly increasing rate of increase of the yellow lines representing the phonetic principle shows will soon become universal.
“This method—scientific, accurate and complete, in conception and execution—has enabled me to foretell accurately the condition of men, manners and matter on this earth fifty, a hundred or a thousand years from now.
“‘By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth and idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at far distance, true colors and shapes.’
“Although I am strong and lusty for my years, the span of my life is drawing to a close, and I have so far been able only to record as a test prophecy, the conditions which will prevail half a century from now.
“With a portion of this history, impartially written in advance of the events therein recorded, I now entrust you, that you may the better enter into the spirit of my life-work. The roll which I here hand you, contains a fragment of history which will be true when you have attained my age of three score years and ten.
“I am desirous of a helper who shall not only aid me during my lifetime, to record events, but carry on the wonderful work, when these eyes shall long have been sightless, these hands but useless dust. Should the concise prophetic record which I here give you attract your interested attention, and the bold and original method by which it is attained win your confidence, I should be glad to have you become at once my assistant, and eventually my successor.
“The key to the method I have long ago reduced to writing, so that in case of my death, before imparting all the details to any one, the science and the art of scientific prophecy shall not die with me, but shall live forever, like my own immortal soul.”
Taking the manuscript, with an eagerness which I could scarce conceal, I expressed my appreciation of his confidence and good will, no less than my admiration of the wonderful method by which mere dots and lines, veriest material and mechanical exponents, should reveal the secrets of things past and to come.
The venerable professor bowed me courteously from his presence, and quitting the old mansion, depository of so much knowledge, of so many hopes, I was soon within earshot of the rattle and roar of the great city.
“Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth,”
the glittering starlight beamed—but I heeded it not. A few minutes’ brisk walking brought me to my own door, my hand clutching, through the thin cloth of my light overcoat, the precious roll which contained that record, more precious than the chronicles of kings long since vanished into thin air; for was it not the unrolling of the time to come—my future, Estelle’s, and our children’s? What glass cases filled with registers of dynasties of the long ago; what sarcophagi, enclosing the mortal remains of monarchy and sages who swayed the earth’s destinies when time was yet young; what crumbling rolls, or incised cylinders, bearing enactments which shook nations to their foundations, achievements which reduced whole peoples to abject slavery, so interesting as these soft, closely-written pages, on which I—I alone now of all mortals on earth—was privileged to hear the happenings of the time to come? What treasury, with walls bursting under pressure of silver bars and golden ingots, with cabinets enclosing priceless jewels—so valuable as those squares of paper, from which those records were compiled, yet which a vagrant spark could reduce to nothingness?
I sprang up the stairs, three at a time, with my brain on fire, my eyes wide open, glistening; the blood throbbing in temples and tingling in finger tips. Like Monte Cristo, I felt that the world was mine.
So eager was I to know with what the womb of the future was pregnant, that I disregarded, in favor of my excited mind, the claims of my wearied body; and forgetful of the fact that I had eaten nothing since morn, I pondered far into the night over the revelations of the wonderful manuscript entrusted to me by my wonderful new-found friend.
Omitting some introductory portions which consisted of practically the same partial explanations as to methods, which Brathwaite had given me orally, I give this manuscript entire.