never be effaced, or even dimmed, while mind and memory last. I am urged on by a powerful impulse to impart what I have learned, and yet I hesitate, feeling keenly my inability to so present the matter that it may fall upon the minds of my fellow-men with that power which its importance appears to me to demand. I have, however, come to regard the performance of the task as the execution of a trust, so I must not let the admonition pass unheeded. Unheeded, did I say? Unheeded it could not pass, for whether divulged to my fellow-beings or not, I have the clearest conviction that the lifelike scenes, the seeming realities, the glorious future of humanity, so vividly laid open to my senses during the ten consecutive and eventful nights of my vision, must henceforth reign uppermost in one mind, at least, while life shall last. The contemplation is so sweet, however, that I would not have it depart. The vision I have beheld has added new zest and given a new charm to my life, while by it my faith has been strengthened in the ultimate happy destiny of mankind upon the Earth.

I would further premise that, for a few days prior to the occurrence of what I am about to relate, the injustice of mankind toward his fellows, and the inequality of the race on earth, had been to me the causes of much reflection, and of no little mental agony.

On the night of the commencement of my vision (June, 1880), I retired at my usual hour, almost utterly dejected, hopeless and wretched. I had visited on that day some of the precincts peopled by the most abject and destitute of our city's poor. I had

A STRIKING CONTRAST.

19

looked once more in anguish of heart upon their poverty, squalor, degradation, and other miseries; had observed the emaciated form, the hollow eye, and the sunken cheek, and, more than all these, had heard again that most pitiable and deplorable of all the signs of distress-the long-drawn sigh of hopeless despair.

Making more apparent and striking the contrast, I had also witnessed in the afternoon of that same day what to me was quite an unusual spectacle at the opposite verge of the social horizon. I had been a spectator at a fashionable wedding in one of our Christian churches, whose pastor and people, paradoxical as it may appear, professed to take the meek and lowly Jesus of Nazareth as the example of their lives. Arrayed in gorgeous robes, and sparkling with the most brilliant and costly of gems, these "meek and lowly" followers of the Nazarene presented a most striking contrast to that destitution I had just before witnessed; and the unequal condition of my fellow-beings on earth became more than usually apparent to my mind, putting it into that dejected and wretched condition to which I have referred upon my retirement for rest and sleep. Such was my condition upon that memorable night when I beheld a vision of Earth the most marvelous in magnitude, resplendent in beauty, and sublime in grandeur. On the succeeding morning I awoke bathed in a profuse perspiration, and with the whole night's scene as vivid before my mind as any reality I have ever witnessed. All that day I wandered abstractedly about, not being able to concentrate my thoughts upon aught but the glories I had witnessed

20

CONTINUATION OF THE VISION.

in my dream. My family rallied me upon my abstraction, but I did not divulge the cause, changing the subject to the best of my ability. I retired the following night, anxious and excited, as may be readily imagined, for, while feeling quite confident that the vision would reappear, I nervously dreaded its return; and yet the thought that it might not was hardly endurable. Feverish from excitement, I lay for some time wakeful, but the day's musings having been exhausting, Nature at last asserted her power, sleep came, and again I found myself in the very midst of that gorgeous scene which I had quitted so suddenly when I awoke in the morning, while the same smiling face was there also to bid me welcome that had accompanied me throughout my previous night's wanderings. Another night passed amid scenes ever-changing but glorious, every moment of the time being crowded with matters the most intensely interesting and absorbing. So passed ten consecutive nights and days; the nights with a continuance of the vision, the days in abstracted reflections of mingled pleasure and astonishment. Each of these nights was to me as years, so pregnant with life, so much did my eyes behold, so vast a field of knowledge was opened to my understanding.

Three months have elapsed before I find myself in a condition to commence a relation of what I experienced upon those memorable nights, yet every scene in these visions, every word and thought communicated, is as clear and fresh before my mind now as then. In the following chapters I shall furnish the reader, so far as I am capable, with a minute and particular narration of what I beheld.

CHAPTER II.

THE VISION.

My first experience was that of being suspended in the air, about a thousand feet above the city of my home-New York. By what means I was there suspended I know not-certainly by nothing visible-and yet it did not appear to me at the time as at all unnatural or strange.

By my side stood a sweet-faced, venerable old man, whose long, snow-white locks fell upon his shoulders, and a full white beard floated upon his breast. He wore a long robe, or gown, of snowy whiteness, which completely enveloped his person, except the feet, which were bare. His robe was buttoned under the chin, and tied with a white cord about the waist. This completed his toilet, so far as I could observe. Though ever present, accompanying me in all my wanderings, he seldom spoke. He directed my attention at times by gestures, but that which it would seem he desired me to observe and understand came to me as by intuition. I felt, while in his presence, no overwhelming sense of contact with a being superhuman, neither did instantaneous flight to and from portions of country far remote, which I often experienced, or in fact anything which I beheld or which occurred during my vision, at the time, appear to me strange or wonderful, but all

22

NEW YORK TRANSFORMED.

seemed natural and normal as the daily avocations and experiences to which I had been accustomed. Neither did this first exclamation from the happyfaced old man: "Come with me, and I will show you the Republic of the Future," fall strangely upon my ear. I felt as a child or a pupil might feel who is about to be taught great things in the most natural manner possible. Upon making the explanation as given above, the old man pointed below. I looked as he directed, and magnificent indeed was the scene that met my eyes.

Across the waters of the bay I gazed, with the Jersey shore extending along my right, over on the green fields and hills of Staten Island and down. through the Narrows, until the white-caps of Old Ocean fell upon my view; then tracing the shore of Long Island, on my left, past the city which lay spread out beneath my feet, far up along the narrow waters of the Sound to the northeast, I gazed in wonder. Turning, with my face to the north, and tracing the noble old Hudson up along the line of the Palisades, suddenly a light flashed upon my mind, and excitedly I broke forth with the exclamation: "It is it is New York; but oh! how changed!"

I will now give a description of the beautiful metamorphosed city which lay spread out before my eyes. I shall confine my description, however, for the present, principally to the external appearance of the city as it presented a bird's-eye view from my point of observation; noting further on other important matters which, I trust, may be of interest to the reader. I shall be particular in describing the gen