Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/73

 less and dissatisfied wandering had brought me back in a humbled and repentant mood. Almost the first news I heard upon landing was the engagement of Edith Alston. The match was brilliant, so they said; his wealth was enormous: yet I thought she was throwing herself away.

This news was still fresh in my ears when, after a separation of several years, I chanced to meet him that I here call Utis. He was about to take a prominent part in a scientific expedition to a remote region of the globe. I earnestly begged him to take me as a volunteer paying my own expenses. In spite of a difference of several years in our ages, a bond of intimate acquaintance, almost approaching friendship, had for many years united us.

He soon learned the real origin of my sudden zeal for scientific research: he was too clear sighted to be easily misled. He earnestly dissuaded me from my intention. My battle was not yet lost, he said, and scouted the idea of so soon forsaking the field. On the eventful evening on which this story opens, he had called by appointment to make some final arrangements. In some unaccountable way the conversation had turned upon mesmerism; and, to my intense surprise, he had advanced views on that subject quite irreconcilable with my preconceived ideas of his mental attitude toward such subjects. The difference between the nineteenth century and the ninety-sixth was not greater than that between the Utis I had formerly known and the Utis who now resumed his narrative as follows:—

"Under these circumstances an entire change of scene