[His companions, observing that he is in a somewhat excited condition, consider it advisable to change the subject.
THE MODEL DEMOCRACY.
"I think you left directions that you were to be thawed in 199— precisely?" said the stranger politely. "Allow me to introduce myself—Number Seven Million and Six. If you feel equal to the effort, and would care to see the vast improvements in our social condition since the close of the benighted Nineteenth Century, I shall be pleased to conduct you."
Mr. Punch then began to realise that he had had himself frozen by a patent process just a hundred years ago, and that he had returned to animation in time for the close of the marvellous Twentieth Century; so he prepared, in much curiosity and excitement, to accompany his guide.
"By the way," observed the latter, "you must not be annoyed if your—hem—habiliments, which we are unaccustomed to nowadays, should attract some attention."
Singularly enough, Mr. Punch had just begun to feel a certain embarrassment at the prospect of being seen in Piccadilly or Regent Street in the company of a person attired in grey cellular pyjamas, a drab blanket, and a glazed pot hat. However, on reaching the street, he found that every man he met was similarly clad, while his own costume—which, in his original century, would only have been remarkable for its unimpeachable taste—was, in this, the subject of universal and invidious comment.
"You'll have your regulation pot hat and pyjamas served out to you in time!" said Mr. Seven Million and Six encouragingly. "Then no one will say anything to you. In these days we resent anything that tends to confer an artificial distinction on any man. Surnames, for example, which occasionally suggested superiority of birth, have long been abolished, and official numbers substituted. You seem to be looking for something you do not see?" he added, noting a certain blankness and disappointment in Mr. Punch's expressive countenance.