1870s

The 1870s are significant in the book not as a backdrop for a conventional historical episode, but as the moment when Prentice Mulford formulated an influential method for approaching ordinary time. His teaching turns the day ahead into something that can be mentally shaped in advance, making anticipation itself part of the book’s larger law of attraction framework.

Prentice Mulford and the Recalled Teaching

The book identifies Prentice Mulford as a teacher whose writings share many insights into the law of attraction and its practical use. It places his relevant writing in the 1870s and presents him as an early pioneer of the principle that mental expectation influences lived circumstances. The date therefore functions as a point of intellectual origin: a nineteenth-century formulation is brought forward to support a modern instruction about how to conduct an entire day.

Mulford’s teaching is presented through the example of an anticipated visit, journey, or shopping trip. A person who tells himself that he is going to have a pleasant experience is described as sending “elements and forces ahead” of his body, where they will arrange conditions for that experience to be pleasant. The opposing state is equally important. Bad humor, fear, or apprehension is said to send unseen agencies ahead that arrange some form of unpleasantness. In this account, thought is not passive preparation; it is an active force that begins “fixing up” circumstances before the person reaches them.

Time as a Field of Preparation

The book uses Mulford’s words to argue that every event in every day can be thought through in advance. The practical recommendation is not limited to major ambitions or distant goals. It applies to the next visit, the next journey, the next shopping trip, and, by extension, the next action awaiting a person in the day’s sequence. The 1870s teaching thus supplies a theory of time in which the future is approached as a field already being influenced by present mental states.

This emphasis also establishes a contrast between deliberate anticipation and unplanned haste. The book says that many people, particularly in Western societies, chase time and complain that they do not have enough of it. Within the law of attraction framework, that complaint is not merely a description of pressure; it is part of the mental condition believed to shape what follows. The future is treated as responsive to the emotional quality with which it is entered.

Influence on the Book’s Practical Argument

Mulford’s historical contribution is used to reinforce the book’s advice to create a day in advance. The passage presents his teaching as evidence that the law of attraction can be applied at the scale of daily routine, not only to abstract ideas of wealth, success, or long-term transformation. His words give the modern instruction a lineage and make the ordinary act of anticipating an appointment or journey appear consequential.

The 1870s therefore operate as a recalled intellectual foundation for a recurring principle: the state of mind precedes the event and is said to help organize it. Mulford’s role is decisive because he supplies the formulation that links expectation, unseen influence, and the concrete texture of future experience. The book’s treatment of the period converts a historical reference into a practical admonition to enter each forthcoming activity with a deliberately pleasant expectation rather than fear or apprehension.