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It is seldom that men begin to muse and sit alone in the twilight until they arrive at the age of fifty, for until that period the cares of the world and the education of their young children engross all their thoughts. Edgar Hastings, our hero, at thirty years of age, was still unmarried, but he had gone through a vast deal of excitement, and the age of musing had been anticipated by twenty years. He was left an orphan at fourteen, with a large income, and the gentleman who had the management of his estates proved faithful, so that when a person of talents and character was wanted to travel with the young man, a liberal recompense was at hand to secure his services. From the age of fourteen to twenty-one he was therefore travelling over Europe; but his education, instead of receiving a check, went on much more advantageously than if he had remained at home, and he became master of all the modern languages in the very countries where they were spoken. The last twelve months of his seven years' tour was spent in England, being stationary in London only during the sitting of Parliament. His talents thus cultivated, and his mind enlarged by liberal travel, he returned to America well worthy the friendship and attention of those who admire and appreciate a character of his stamp. He had not therefore been back more than a year, before his society was courted by some of the best men in the country; but previous to his settling himself into a home, he thought it but proper to travel through his own country also. His old friend, still at his elbow, accompanied him; but at the close of the excursion, which lasted nearly two years, he was taken ill of a fever caught from an exposure near the Lakes, and died after a few days' illness.
In this serious attempt to forecast the changes ahead in the 20th century from the year 1906, the author deals with the accelerating rate of scientific progress, housing, travel, population, business, pleasure, newspapers, utilization of the sea, science, education, religion, economics, and law. He describes his intentions in the following manner in his Preface: "The following was at first intended to be no more than an attempt to foresee the probable trend of mechanical invention and scientific discovery during the present century. But as the work took shape it was seen to involve a certain amount of what may be called moral conjecture, since the material progress of the new age could not very well be imagined without taking into account its mental characteristics. In these expectations of an optimist, a great ethical improvement of the civilised human race has been anticipated, and a rate of progress foreseen which perhaps no previous writers have looked for. Both in regard to moral development and material progress, it has been the aim of the author to predict nothing that the tendencies of existing movement do not justify us in expecting. "An attempt of this kind is exposed to facile criticism. It will be easy for objectors to signalise this or that expected invention as beyond scientific possibility, that or the other moral reform as fit only for Utopia. But those who will consent to perpend the enormous and utterly unforeseen advance of the nineteenth century will recognise the danger of limiting their anticipations concerning the possibilities of the twenty-first. A fanciful description in (I think) Addison's Spectator of an invention by which the movements of an indicator on a lettered dial were imagined to be reproduced on a similar dial at a distance, and employed as a means of communication, must have seemed wholly chimerical to its readers; and even as recently as fifty years ago, anyone who predicted the telephone would have been laughed at. When the principle of the accumulator was already discovered a very competent practical electrician told the writer that he need not worry himself much about the idea : there was not the least likelihood that electricity could ever be "bottled up in cisterns"! On the whole there is more likelihood of error in timidity than in boldness when we attempt to foresee what will be attained after the increasingly rapid movement of scientific progress during this twentieth century shall have gathered full force.
In this serious attempt to forecast the changes ahead in the 20th century from the year 1906, the author deals with the accelerating rate of scientific progress, housing, travel, population, business, pleasure, newspapers, utilization of the sea, science, education, religion, economics, and law
"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--