{"product_id":"2940013768871","title":"A Week in the Future","description":"I have often observed that unmarried people, old maids and old bachelors,\u003cbr\u003etake a keener interest in old family history, and in the ramifications of\u003cbr\u003ethe successive generations from the most remote ancestors they can claim,\u003cbr\u003ethan those who form the actual links in the chain of descent, and leave\u003cbr\u003echildren behind them to carry on the chronicle. Having lived all my life\u003cbr\u003ewith a mother who nearly attained the age of a century, and having a\u003cbr\u003estrong interest in things past as well as in things present, I have been\u003cbr\u003esteeped in memories of old times. I know how middle-class intelligent\u003cbr\u003epeople lived and worked, dressed and dined, worshipped God and amused\u003cbr\u003ethemselves, what they read for pleasure and for profit, not only so far\u003cbr\u003eas her own recollections could carry the dear old lady, but two\u003cbr\u003egenerations farther back. In her youth she had lived much with an\u003cbr\u003eintelligent grandmother, who could recollect the rebellion of 1745, and\u003cbr\u003ethe battle of Prestonpans, and had been of mature years during the American\u003cbr\u003eWar of Independence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy own mother's youth had been the period of the gigantic struggle of\u003cbr\u003eGreat Britain, sometimes single-handed, against the power of the first\u003cbr\u003eNapoleon. The older lady had said to her then youthful descendant that no\u003cbr\u003eone could expect to see as much as she had seen in her life, which\u003cbr\u003eextended from 1734 to 1817, and included the American War, the French\u003cbr\u003eRevolution, and the application of machinery to so many of the arts. The\u003cbr\u003egrandchild, born at the beginning of 1791, had seen five French\u003cbr\u003eRevolutions, and the map of Europe strangely altered; triumphs of art and\u003cbr\u003escience, countless in number; steam, gas, electricity, the railway\u003cbr\u003esystem; mechanical inventions which had revolutionized industry; and the\u003cbr\u003erise of mighty colonies to compensate for the loss of the United States.\u003cbr\u003eIn the growth of one great colony she had taken a deep personal interest,\u003cbr\u003efor she had watched it from the day of very small things in 1839. As we\u003cbr\u003esat and talked together, we would wonder what there could be for me to\u003cbr\u003esee that would be equal to what had unfolded before her eyes. Was there\u003cbr\u003eto be federation or disintegration? Was the homogeneous yet heterogeneous\u003cbr\u003eBritish Empire to be firmly welded together, or were the component parts\u003cbr\u003eto be allowed peacefully to separate and form new states? Was the\u003cbr\u003e_régime_ of unrestricted competition and free trade and individualism to\u003cbr\u003ebe kept up, or were these to be exchanged for protection and\u003cbr\u003ecollectivism? What was to be the outcome of the Irish Question, of German\u003cbr\u003eSocialism, of Russian Nihilism? Was Britain to remain mistress of India,\u003cbr\u003eand to keep that dependency? Was she to annex all territory which might\u003cbr\u003ebe supposed to preserve her open route towards it? What struggle was\u003cbr\u003ethere to be in central Asia between Britain and Russia? What power was\u003cbr\u003elikely to demolish the terrible armed peace of Europe? Such questions as\u003cbr\u003ethese occupied my own mind primarily--my mother had taken the keenest\u003cbr\u003einterest in them all, but latterly she cared less for the questions of\u003cbr\u003ethe day, and as her health gradually declined, she went further and\u003cbr\u003efurther back till she seemed to live more in the first ten years of the\u003cbr\u003ecentury than in the more recent past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen, after a long, wearing, and painful illness, I closed my mother's\u003cbr\u003eeyes--my companionship and occupation both gone at once--I had to\u003cbr\u003econsider how I was to take up my life again. I was poorer after her\u003cbr\u003edeath, because her annuity, which must have made the insurance company\u003cbr\u003ethe losers, died with her, and I was left with that sort of provision\u003cbr\u003ewhich the world considers quite sufficient for an elderly single woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy brother Robert came the day after the funeral to talk matters over\u003cbr\u003ewith me. \"You have had a shock, Emily,\" he said, \"You would not save\u003cbr\u003eyourself any way;--now, you must try to take life easier. What do you\u003cbr\u003eyourself think of doing?\"","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47069025435888,"sku":"2940013768871","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013768871_p0.jpg?v=1763598844","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013768871","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}