LOOKING BACKWARD.* T is astonishing how literature like everything else repeats itself. Verily, in the words of Solomon, "There is no new thing under the sun." The reading world at this writing are enraptured and engrossed with a new literary sensation, with a new philosophy of life as promulgated and explained by Bellamy in his book "Looking Backward." Not enumerating buyers beyond the sea, it has at this writing already reached the unprecedented sale of 220,000 copies, and still the demand for it is unabated. This fact would indicate that Solomon was mistaken; or, if not mistaken in his day, was wholly unqualified to prognosticate for the future. Such a recognition of literary ability by the reading public must indicate that said public has at last found something new. Here at last must be a philosophy or a creed that now for the first time is urged upon the attention of mankind. Clubs are formed in almost every town to discuss its principles; societies are organized to test, as far as may be in the present low state of social development, its virtues; and reformers, male and female, unite their voices in musical chorus in praise of what they in ecstatic rhapsody call the new evangel. Getting down to business, "Looking Backward," in plain prose, is a fanciful sketch of a state of society *"Looking Backward." Edward Bellamy. which its author imagines will exist in the year 2000. To describe it properly he puts the hero of the book, a Mr. Julian West, into a mesmeric sleep in an underground room of his house, to allay nervous prostration, and take up his time while he is waiting for his dinner. While he lies thus sweetly sleeping, a great fire destroys that portion of Boston and Mr. Julian West is buried hopelessly amid the ruins. There he remains undiscovered for one hundred years or more, until by accident he is unearthed by a savant of that distant time, one Dr. Leete. Under the doctor's skillful appliances of the art restorative, the breath, so long suspended, comes back to the mesmeric sleeper, and he wakes, feeling just as young as ever in the new world. He is of course surprised and astounded at the great changes that have taken place in Boston since he went to sleep one hundred years previous. The interest of the story thus all centers in the changes that have taken place. Of course to Julian West it is a very thrilling yet entertaining experience, the more so because when he went to sleep in the old world he was, like most young men of his age, in love with a beautiful girl, and, as luck would have it, he wakens one hundred years later in a house where there is another beautiful girl, an only daughter, one who strangely reminds him of his lost Edith, one bearing the same name, and, better still, one quite willing to be courted. This, to Mr. West, the hero of this wonderful transformation, is decidedly interesting and agreeable, and terminates as might be expected in a transfer of his |