One hundred and thirteen years later, in September, A. D. 2000, Dr.
Leete, a physician of Boston, on the retired list, was conducting
excavations in his garden for the foundations of a private laboratory,
when the workers came on a mass of masonry covered with ashes and
charcoal. On opening it, a vault, luxuriously fitted up in the style of a
nineteenth-century bedchamber, was found, and on the bed the body of a
young man looking as if he had just lain down to sleep. Although great
trees had been growing above the vault, the unaccountable preservation of
the youth's body tempted Dr. Leete to attempt resuscitation, and to his
own astonishment his efforts proved successful. The sleeper returned to
life, and after a short time to the full vigor of youth which his
appearance had indicated. His shock on learning what had befallen him was
so great as to have endangered his sanity but for the medical skill of
Dr. Leete, and the not less sympathetic ministrations of the other
members of the household, the doctor's wife, and Edith the beautiful
daughter. Presently, however, the young man forgot to wonder at what had
happened to himself in his astonishment on learning of the social
transformation through which the world had passed while he lay sleeping.
Step by step, almost as to a child, his hosts explained to him, who had
known no other way of living except the struggle for existence, what were
the simple principles of national co-operation for the promotion of the
general welfare on which the new civilization rested. He learned that
there were no longer any who were or could be richer or poorer than
others, but that all were economic equals. He learned that no one any
longer worked for another, either by compulsion or for hire, but that all
alike were in the service of the nation working for the common fund,
which all equally shared, and that even necessary personal attendance, as
of the physician, was rendered as to the state like that of the military
surgeon. All these wonders, it was explained, had very simply come about
as the results of replacing private capitalism by public capitalism, and
organizing the machinery of production and distribution, like the
political government, as business of general concern to be carried on for
the public benefit instead of private gain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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