Looking Further Backward

I recognize that such thoughts may be entertained by you. I would not even blame you for entertaining them. I approach my task with diffidence as great as your reluctance to be instructed by me can be. The tongue I speak to you in is not my own tongue. I must invite your attention to events which you must necessarily feel a sense of humiliation in considering, since they evidence the foolishness of your ancestors, and the strange infatuation for impracticable ideas that dominated your immediate progenitors. I must narrate to you a history that you can take little pride in. Mine is the unpleasant task to dwell with you upon the causes that led to what many of you consider your degradation. Having thus besought your favor, I begin the first of those lectures which, as Professor of History in Shawmut College, it is my duty to deliver and your duty to attend. Twenty-three years ago, in the year 2000, according to your former method of calculating from the birth of Jesus Christ, one Julian West, who then occupied the chair of history, now occupied by me, wrote a book which he called Looking Backward This book you have all perused in your earlier historical studies; and you are all somewhat familiar with the condition of society which it purported to describe. I will not, therefore, dwell upon it for any length of time, though some reference to it is necessary, as I propose in my lectures to you, to continue the history of your country from the period at which Professor West stops to the present day.