When the Sleeper Wakes

So I immersed myself in one of the surgeon's volumes from his fine library of imagination and waited.

I think the book was one of Mr. H.G. Wells, probably The Sleeper Awakes or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for I was in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything when later we sat down together across the table.

I only wish I could give some idea of the atmosphere that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent to whatever was vast and amazing and strange.

You could then, whoever you are, understand a little the ease with which I accepted Sir John's new discovery.

In that fashion, one got out a sort of gigantic caricature of the existing world, everything swollen to vast proportions and massive beyond measure.

In my case, that phase produced a book, When the Sleeper Wakes, in which I am told by competent New Yorkers that I, starting with London and unbiased mind, this rule of three method and my otherwise unaided imagination produced something more like Chicago than any other place wherein righteous men are likely to be found.

That I shall verify in due course, but my present point is merely that to write such a book is to discover how thoroughly wrong this all-too-obvious method of enlarging the present is.

One goes on, therefore, if one is to succumb altogether to the prophetic habit, to a really scientific attack upon the future.

I think the book was one of Mr. H. G.

Wells, probably The Sleeper Awakes, or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for I was in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything when, later, we sat down together across the table.

I only wish I could give some idea of the atmosphere that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent to whatever was vast and amazing and strange.

You could then, whoever you are, understand a little the ease with which I accepted Sir John's new discovery.

I think the book was one of Mr. H. G.

Wells, probably The Sleeper Awakes, or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for I was in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything when, later, we sat down together across the table.

I only wish I could give some idea of the atmosphere that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent to whatever was vast and amazing and strange.

You could then, whoever you are, understand a little the ease with which I accepted Sir John's new discovery.