Portland, Oregon, A.D. 1999, and other sketches

Chapter 3: Preface.

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About This Book

The collection opens with a framed narrative in which an elderly narrator offers vivid prophecies about a future Portland, imagining commonplace aerial travel, transformed transportation, suburban expansion, and technological conveniences. Subsequent sketches shift to regional vignettes and short stories that recall frontier life, mining camps, quirky local characters, political episodes, and everyday humor, interweaving reminiscence and social commentary. The pieces alternate speculative futurism and grounded anecdotes, presenting both imaginative forecasts and earthy portraits of community, change, and practical invention.

Preface.

In introducing my little romance to the public, I do so with little misgivings or apologies.

The close observer will agree that the changes that are anticipated—here related as established facts—are merely the signs of the times, and that not one-half of the story is told.

One might wish to be a living witness of the great projects occurring A. D. 1999, and may possibly resent that he was not born later on in the cycles of Time, but if his heart is in the right place he can realize that there is nothing lost, and his soul goes marching onward and upward in its eternal flight.

“Oh, sometimes gleams upon our sight

Thro’ present wrong, the eternal right;

And step by step, since time began,

We see the steady gain of Man.”