Gauged by certain standards and viewed from certain standpoints, a mere century is but a brief compass of time.
From an individual point of view, in the daily routine of life, a century appears to be an embryo-eternity. When time is gauged with clock like precision and to each minute is allotted its full value, a century assumes an unfathomable depth. But, in the cycles of time, a century is a mere footprint in the passage of time; a small link in the endless chain of eternity.
Time is easily annihilated by mental process. Witness the feat performed by Mahomet, related in a certain chapter of the [Mahomet on Rapid Transit.] Koran. The faithful are informed in this passage of the Koran that the Prophet was awakened one morning from a deep, refreshing slumber by an angel and was summoned into Paradise to confer with Allah. While in the act of ascending to Heaven, Mahomet's foot struck and upset a pitcher of water which stood near the couch. The Koran unblushingly proclaims that the Prophet held 999 long conferences with Allah and had safely returned to his couch, ready for another snooze, before the water in the falling pitcher had time to spill on the floor!
There is something very refreshing in this narrative. It shows that Mahomet was well up in rapid transit matters and again it proves the sublime virtue of a man, a son of the desert, a turbaned Washington, who couldn't tell a lie and who resisted the temptation to make this batch of conferences with Allah an even thousand. Mahomet missed his calling; he ought to have been a newspaper reporter.
Assuming the prerogatives of the Koran, the author, at one stroke of his pen, proposes to annihilate time. Plunged into a profound slumber he had a dream. Great men and little men; the renowned and the ignorant; the philosopher and the Australian bushman; quakers and cannibals; the prince and the peasant, all these and myriads of others, have had their dreams. Love's dream has been the theme of all ages, the burden of songs untold. The dream of conquest, the dream of ambition and dreams of every human passion and desire have throbbed within the human brain.
But the author's dream is not swayed by human emotions; it is not the handmaid of [America's Giant Republic, 1999.] passion. It is a dream that unseals the book of the future and reveals to the world the colossal, peace-loving, giant republic of the universe in the year of our Lord, 1999,