Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/49

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A TALE OF THE FUTURE.
45

and the language I speak is the English spoken in 1888. Could you possibly get anything more modern than that?"

He gazed at me with admiration, his eyes and features beaming with delight, and ejaculated,—"Oh! this is a reward! This is a treasure worth a life's labour on earth! What a glorious, what a magnificent specimen of extinct man you are!" And with this the dear old fellow skipped round the hall with wonderful agility for one of his years, and coming up to me again, said:—

"This is not the year of our Lord 1888, my friend, but it is the year of our Lord 5575."

My mental observation at that moment was, "This dear old thing is mad! They all are mad! I must be mad too!" I clasped my head in my hands, and swung to and fro in a state of intense mental agony. "5575!" My agony was so great that I exclaimed aloud, "I am Mad! Mad! Mad!" and was about to swoon away, when he took hold of my