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in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I
must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to
appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.
'While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by
a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in
a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then
resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings
towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a
strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
'There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize,
corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered
in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of
griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of
our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and
fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the
horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal
bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in
which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already
spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated
greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. Here and there rose
a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and
there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There
were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of
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