{"product_id":"2940013751033","title":"The Man in Asbestos--An Allegory of the Future","description":"To begin with let me admit that I did it on purpose. Perhaps it was\u003cbr\u003epartly from jealousy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop\u003cbr\u003einto a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head first\u003cbr\u003einto a distant future and be a witness of its marvels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wanted to do that too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI always had been, I still am, a passionate student of social\u003cbr\u003eproblems. The world of to-day with its roaring machinery, the\u003cbr\u003eunceasing toil of its working classes, its strife, its poverty, its\u003cbr\u003ewar, its cruelty, appals me as I look at it. I love to think of the\u003cbr\u003etime that must come some day when man will have conquered nature, and\u003cbr\u003ethe toil-worn human race enter upon an era of peace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI loved to think of it, and I longed to see it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I set about the thing deliberately.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat I wanted to do was to fall asleep after the customary fashion,\u003cbr\u003efor two or three hundred years at least, and wake and find myself in\u003cbr\u003ethe marvel world of the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI made my preparations for the sleep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI bought all the comic papers that I could find, even the illustrated\u003cbr\u003eones. I carried them up to my room in my hotel: with them I brought up\u003cbr\u003ea pork pie and dozens and dozens of doughnuts. I ate the pie and the\u003cbr\u003edoughnuts, then sat back in the bed and read the comic papers one\u003cbr\u003eafter the other. Finally, as I felt the awful lethargy stealing upon\u003cbr\u003eme, I reached out my hand for the London Weekly Times, and held up the\u003cbr\u003eeditorial page before my eye.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI could feel my senses leaving me. In the room across the hall there\u003cbr\u003ewas a man singing. His voice, that had been loud, came fainter and\u003cbr\u003efainter through the transom. I fell into a sleep, the deep\u003cbr\u003eimmeasurable sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was\u003cbr\u003ehushed. Dimly I could feel the days go past, then the years, and then\u003cbr\u003ethe long passage of the centuries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen, not as it were gradually, but quite suddenly, I woke up, sat up,\u003cbr\u003eand looked about me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere was I?","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47180898304240,"sku":"2940013751033","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013751033_p0.jpg?v=1763589768","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013751033","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}