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. “FIFTY YEARS HENCE.” WARWICK:--There is a history in all men’s lives Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life; which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time: ... _Henry IV., Part II, iii, 1._ With my feet planted on the one thousand eight hundred and ninety-third step in that part of time’s imperishable edifice which has risen since the birth of Jesus, the Blessed Nazarene, and my head above the clouds of five decades which hover above it, I, Roger Brathwaite, read as upon a printed scroll the yet-unwritten records of the year 1943. These I have reduced to writing as an earnest of what may come when my system of verifying and completing history and of anticipating the future shall have been carried out as fully for five hundred years as for fifty years to come. I see around me the millions of this year 1943 as people of the time in which I live--or rather find myself so transported mentally that the events of fifty years from 1893 onwards are as of the past. I see the households and the nations of 1943, and with them hold plain converse in the universal tongue of the Electric Age; for the language written, and to a great extent spoken all over the civilized world, is everywhere the same; having been prepared by a committee of philologists of all countries, and formally adopted at a congress held in Paris in 1915. It combines the soft liquid beauty of the Italian, the dignity of the Spanish, and the majesty of the Greek; the adaptability to new ideas of the German, the delicate shadings of the French, and the business-like exactness of the English. Its spelling is phonetic; and phonetic printing is as common as phonographic writing. The written language has been greatly enriched by characters to represent signs which in the year 1900 could not be expressed in writing or in printing; as, for instance, whistling, clucking and kissing, barking, howling, groaning, laughter, etc. In fact, every sound which can be imitated by the human voice may be so recorded upon paper that it can be read and reproduced by any one (not dumb) who can read and write.