Latest / Daily Sci-Fi Books / 09 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton

Transcript

09 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton · Daily Sci-Fi Books

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter nine, the Higher Criticism and mister Hips Pebblewick boasted
0:10
Speaker 1: an enterprising evening paper of its own, called the Pebblewick Globe,
0:16
Speaker 1: and it was the great vaunt of the editor's life
0:19
Speaker 1: that he had got out an edition announcing the mystery
0:22
Speaker 1: of the vanishing signboard, almost simultaneously with its vanishing. In
0:29
Speaker 1: the rows that followed, Sandwich men found no little protection
0:33
Speaker 1: from the blows indiscriminately given them behind and before. In
0:39
Speaker 1: the large wooden boards they carried inscribed the Vanishing pub
0:44
Speaker 1: Pebblewick's fairy Tale Special, and the paper contained a categorical
0:51
Speaker 1: and mainly correct account of what had happened, or what
0:54
Speaker 1: seemed to have happened to the eyes of the amazed
0:58
Speaker 1: Jarge and his crowd of somethizers. George Byrne, carpenter of
1:04
Speaker 1: this town, with Samuel Gripes Drayman, in the service of
1:09
Speaker 1: Messrs j and Gubbins Brewers, together with a number of
1:14
Speaker 1: other well known residents, passed by the new building erected
1:18
Speaker 1: on the West Beach for various forms of entertainment, had
1:21
Speaker 1: popularly called the Small Universal Hall. Seeing outside it, one
1:27
Speaker 1: of the old in signs, now so rare they drew
1:31
Speaker 1: the quite proper inference that the place retained the license
1:35
Speaker 1: to sell alcoholic liquors, which so many other places in
1:39
Speaker 1: this neighborhood have recently lost. The persons inside, however, appear
1:45
Speaker 1: to have denied all knowledge of the fact. And when
1:48
Speaker 1: the party, after some regrettable scenes in which no life
1:52
Speaker 1: was lost, came out on the beach again, it was
1:55
Speaker 1: found that the inn sign had been destroyed or stolen.
2:02
Speaker 1: All parties were quite sober, and had indeed obtained no
2:06
Speaker 1: opportunity to be anything else. The mystery is underlying inquiry.
2:12
Speaker 1: But this comparatively realistic record was local and spontaneous, and
2:16
Speaker 1: owed not a little to the accidental honesty of the editor. Moreover,
2:22
Speaker 1: evening papers are often more honest than morning papers because
2:26
Speaker 1: they are written by ill paid and hard worked underlings
2:30
Speaker 1: in a great hurry, and there is no time for
2:32
Speaker 1: more timid people to correct them. By the time the
2:36
Speaker 1: morning papers came out next day, a faint but perceptible
2:39
Speaker 1: change had passed over the story of the vanishing sign board.
2:45
Speaker 1: In the daily paper, which had the largest circulation and
2:49
Speaker 1: the most influence in that part of the world, the
2:52
Speaker 1: problem was committed to a gentleman known by what seemed
2:55
Speaker 1: to the non journalistic world the singular name of Hibbs. However,
3:00
Speaker 1: it had been affixed to him in jest, in connection
3:03
Speaker 1: with the almost complicated caution with which all his public
3:07
Speaker 1: criticisms were qualified at every turn, so that everything came
3:11
Speaker 1: to depend upon the conjunctions upon but, and yet, and
3:17
Speaker 1: though and similar words. As his salary grew larger for
3:22
Speaker 1: editors and proprietors like that sort of thing, and his
3:25
Speaker 1: old friends fewer, For the most generous of friends cannot
3:28
Speaker 1: but feel faintly acid at a success which has in
3:32
Speaker 1: it nothing of the infectious flavor of glory, he grew
3:36
Speaker 1: more and more to value himself as a diplomatist, a
3:40
Speaker 1: man who always said the right thing. But he was
3:43
Speaker 1: not without his intellectual nemesis, For at last he became
3:47
Speaker 1: so very diplomatic as to be darkly and densely unintelligible.
3:53
Speaker 1: People who knew him had no difficulty in believing that
3:57
Speaker 1: what he had said was the right thing, the tactful thing,
4:00
Speaker 1: the thing that should save the situation, but they had
4:04
Speaker 1: great difficulty in discovering what it was. In his early days,
4:09
Speaker 1: he had had a great talent, for one of the
4:11
Speaker 1: worst tricks of modern journalism, the trick of dismissing the
4:15
Speaker 1: important part of a question and appearing to get to
4:19
Speaker 1: business on the unimportant part of it. Thus he would say,
4:23
Speaker 1: whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of
4:26
Speaker 1: the vivisection of pauper children, we shall all agree that
4:31
Speaker 1: it should only be done, in any event, by fully
4:34
Speaker 1: qualified practitioners. But in the later and darker days of
4:39
Speaker 1: his diplomacy he seemed rather to dismiss the important part
4:44
Speaker 1: of a subject and get to grips with some totally
4:47
Speaker 1: different subject, following some timid and elusive train of associations
4:52
Speaker 1: of his own. In his late bad manner, as they
4:56
Speaker 1: say of painters, he was just as likely to say,
5:00
Speaker 1: whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of
5:03
Speaker 1: the vivisection of pauper children. No progressive mind can doubt
5:08
Speaker 1: that the influence of the Vatican is on the decline.
5:13
Speaker 1: His nickname had stuck to him in honor of a
5:15
Speaker 1: paragraph he was alleged to have written when the American
5:19
Speaker 1: President was wounded by a bullet fired by a lunatic
5:22
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, and which was said to have run
5:26
Speaker 1: the President passed a good night and his condition is
5:28
Speaker 1: greatly improved. The assassin is not, however, a German, as
5:32
Speaker 1: was at first supposed. Men stared at that mysterious conjunction
5:37
Speaker 1: till they wanted to go mad and to shoot somebody themselves. Hibbs, however,
5:44
Speaker 1: was a long, lank man with straight yellowish hair and
5:47
Speaker 1: a manner that was externally soft and mild, but secretly supercilious.
5:53
Speaker 1: He had been, when at Cambridge, a friend of Levison,
5:57
Speaker 1: and they had both prided themselves on being moderate Paul politicians.
6:01
Speaker 1: But if you have had your hat smashed over your
6:04
Speaker 1: nose by one who has very recently described himself as
6:07
Speaker 1: a law abiden man, and if you have had to
6:11
Speaker 1: run for your life with one coat tail and encouraged
6:14
Speaker 1: to further bodily activity by having irregular pieces of a
6:18
Speaker 1: corrugated iron roof thrown after you by men more energetic
6:22
Speaker 1: than yourself, you will find you emerge with emotions which
6:26
Speaker 1: are not solely those of a moderate politician. Hidds, however,
6:32
Speaker 1: had already composed alderete on the Peblic incident, which rather
6:36
Speaker 1: pointed to the truth of the story, so far as
6:39
Speaker 1: his articles ever pointed to anything. His motives for veering
6:44
Speaker 1: vaguely in this direction, were as usual complex. He knew
6:48
Speaker 1: the millionaire who owned the paper had a hobby of spiritualism,
6:52
Speaker 1: and something might always come out of not suppressing a
6:55
Speaker 1: marvelous story. He knew that too, at least the prosperous
7:00
Speaker 1: artisans or small tradesmen who had attested the tale were
7:05
Speaker 1: staunch supporters of the party. He knew that Lord Ivywood
7:10
Speaker 1: must be mildly but not effectually checked, for Lord Ivywood
7:15
Speaker 1: was of the other party, and there could be no
7:18
Speaker 1: milder or less effectual way of checking him than by
7:22
Speaker 1: allowing the paper to lend at least a temporary credit
7:25
Speaker 1: to a well supported story that came from outside and
7:29
Speaker 1: certainly had not been like so many stories created in
7:32
Speaker 1: the office. Amid all these considerations, had Hibbs, however, steered
7:38
Speaker 1: his way to a more or less confirmatory article when
7:41
Speaker 1: the sudden apparition of J. Levison's secretary in the sub
7:44
Speaker 1: editor's room with a burst collar and broken eyeglasses led
7:49
Speaker 1: mister Hibbs into a long private conversation with him and
7:52
Speaker 1: a comparative reversal of his plans. But of course he
7:56
Speaker 1: did not write a new article. He was not of
7:59
Speaker 1: that divine order who make all things new. He chopped
8:03
Speaker 1: and changed his original article in such a way that
8:06
Speaker 1: it was something quite beyond the most bewildering article he
8:10
Speaker 1: had written in the past, and is still prized by
8:13
Speaker 1: those highly cultured persons who collect the worst literature of
8:18
Speaker 1: the world. It began, indeed, with the comparatively familiar formula.
8:25
Speaker 1: Whether we take the more lax or the more advanced
8:27
Speaker 1: view of the old disputed problem of the morality or
8:30
Speaker 1: immorality of the wooden signboard. As such, we shall all
8:34
Speaker 1: agree that the scenes enacted at Pebblewick were very discreditable
8:38
Speaker 1: to most, though not all concerned. After that tact degenerated
8:44
Speaker 1: into a riot of irrelevance, it was a wonderful article.
8:52
Speaker 1: The reader could get from it a faint glimpse of
8:55
Speaker 1: mister Hibbs's opinion on almost every other subject except the
8:58
Speaker 1: subject of the article. The first half of the next
9:03
Speaker 1: sentence made it quite clear that mister Hibbs, had he
9:06
Speaker 1: been present, would not have lent his active assistance to
9:10
Speaker 1: the massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the massacres of September.
9:15
Speaker 1: But the second half of the sentence suggested with equal
9:17
Speaker 1: clearness that, since these two acts were no longer, as
9:21
Speaker 1: it were, in contemplation, and all attempts to prevent them
9:26
Speaker 1: would probably arrive a little late, he felt the warmest
9:29
Speaker 1: friendship for the French nation. He merely insisted that his
9:34
Speaker 1: friendship should never be mentioned except in the French language.
9:38
Speaker 1: It must be called an entaunt. In the language taught
9:41
Speaker 1: to tourists by waiters. It must on no account be
9:45
Speaker 1: called an understanding in a language understanded of the people.
9:51
Speaker 1: From the first half of the sentence following, it might
9:54
Speaker 1: safely be inferred that mister Hibbs had read Milton, or
9:58
Speaker 1: at least the passage about sons of Belile. From the
10:02
Speaker 1: second half that he knew nothing about bad wine, let
10:05
Speaker 1: alone good The next sentence began with the corruption of
10:10
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire and contrived to end with doctor Clifford.
10:14
Speaker 1: Then there was a weak plea for eugenics and a
10:17
Speaker 1: warm plea against conscription, which was not true eugenics, that
10:23
Speaker 1: was all, and it was headed the riot at Pebblewick.
10:29
Speaker 1: Yet some injustice would be done to hims. However, if
10:31
Speaker 1: we concealed the fact that this chaotic leader was followed
10:36
Speaker 1: by quite a considerable mass of public correspondences. The people
10:41
Speaker 1: who write to newspapers are, it may be supposed, a
10:43
Speaker 1: small eccentric body, like most of those that sway a
10:47
Speaker 1: modern state, but at least unlike the lawyers or the financiers,
10:51
Speaker 1: or the members of parliament or the men of science.
10:55
Speaker 1: They are people of all kinds, scattered all over the country,
10:59
Speaker 1: of all classes, counties, ages, sects, sexes, and stages of insanity.
11:07
Speaker 1: The letters that followed Hibbs's article are still worth looking
11:11
Speaker 1: up in the dusty old files of his paper. A
11:14
Speaker 1: dear old lady in the densest part of the Midlands
11:17
Speaker 1: wrote to suggest that there might really have been an
11:20
Speaker 1: old ship wrecked on the shore during the proceedings. Mister
11:25
Speaker 1: Levison may have omitted to notice it, or at that
11:28
Speaker 1: late hour of the evening it may have been mistaken
11:30
Speaker 1: for a sign board, especially by a person of defective sight.
11:34
Speaker 1: My own sight has been failing for some time, and
11:37
Speaker 1: I am still a diligent reader of your paper. If
11:42
Speaker 1: mister Hibbs's diplomacy had left one nerve in his soul undrugged,
11:46
Speaker 1: he would have laughed, or burst into tears, or got
11:50
Speaker 1: drunk or gone into a monastery over a letter like
11:53
Speaker 1: that as it was, He measured it with a pencil
11:57
Speaker 1: and decided that it was just too long to get
11:59
Speaker 1: into the Then there was a letter from a theorist,
12:04
Speaker 1: and a theorist of the worst sort. There is no
12:07
Speaker 1: great harm in the theorist who makes up a new
12:10
Speaker 1: theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who
12:14
Speaker 1: starts with a false theory and then sees everything as
12:17
Speaker 1: making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of
12:21
Speaker 1: human reason. The letter began like a bullet let loose
12:26
Speaker 1: by the trigger. Is not the whole question met by
12:30
Speaker 1: Exodus four three. I enclose pamphlets in which I have
12:36
Speaker 1: proved the point quite plainly, and which none of the
12:39
Speaker 1: bishops or the so called free church ministers have attempted
12:42
Speaker 1: to answer. The connection between the rod or poll and
12:46
Speaker 1: the snake, so clearly indicated in scripture is no less
12:50
Speaker 1: clear in this case. It is well known that those
12:53
Speaker 1: who follow after strong drink often announced themselves as having
12:57
Speaker 1: seen a snake. Is it not that those unhappy revelers
13:01
Speaker 1: beheld it in its transformed state as a pole? See
13:05
Speaker 1: also Deuteronomy eighteen two. If our so called religious leaders,
13:11
Speaker 1: et cetera. The letter went on for thirty three pages,
13:17
Speaker 1: and Hibbs was perhaps justified in this case in thinking
13:20
Speaker 1: the letter rather too long. Then there was the scientific
13:25
Speaker 1: correspondent who said, might it not be due to the
13:29
Speaker 1: acoustic qualities of the hall? He had never believed in
13:32
Speaker 1: the corrugated iron hall. The very word hall itself, he
13:37
Speaker 1: added playfully, was often so sharpened and shortened by the
13:41
Speaker 1: abrupt echoes of those repeated metallic curves, that it had
13:45
Speaker 1: every appearance of being the word hell, and had caused
13:49
Speaker 1: many theological entanglements and some police prosecutions. In the light
13:55
Speaker 1: of these facts, he wished to draw the editor's attention
13:59
Speaker 1: to some very very curious details about this supposed presence
14:04
Speaker 1: or absence of an in sign. It would be noted
14:08
Speaker 1: that many of the witnesses, and especially the most respectable
14:12
Speaker 1: of them, constantly referred to something that is supposed to
14:15
Speaker 1: be outside. The word outside occurs at least five times
14:21
Speaker 1: in the depositions of the complaining persons. Surely, by all
14:25
Speaker 1: scientific analogy, we may infer that the unusual phrase in
14:30
Speaker 1: sign is an acoustic error. For inside, the word inside
14:36
Speaker 1: would so naturally occur in any discussion either about the
14:40
Speaker 1: building or the individual when the debate was of a
14:43
Speaker 1: hygienic character. This letter was signed medical student, and the
14:48
Speaker 1: less intelligent parts of it were selected for publication in
14:51
Speaker 1: the paper. Then there was a really humorous man who
14:57
Speaker 1: wrote and said there was nothing at all inexplicable or
15:00
Speaker 1: unusual about the case. He himself, he said, had often
15:03
Speaker 1: seen a sign board outside a pub when he went
15:05
Speaker 1: into it, and been quite unable to see it when
15:08
Speaker 1: he came out. This letter, the only one that had
15:11
Speaker 1: any quality of literature, was sternly set aside by mister Hibbs.
15:18
Speaker 1: Then came a cultured gentleman with a light touch, who
15:21
Speaker 1: merely made a suggestion, had anyone read H. G. Wells's
15:26
Speaker 1: story about the kink in space? He contrived indescribably to
15:31
Speaker 1: suggest that no one had even heard of it except himself,
15:35
Speaker 1: or perhaps of mister Wells either. The story indicated that
15:40
Speaker 1: men's feet might be in one part of the world
15:43
Speaker 1: and their eyes in another. He offered the suggestion for
15:47
Speaker 1: what it was worth. The particular pile of letters on
15:50
Speaker 1: which Hibbs, however, threw it, showed only too clearly what
15:54
Speaker 1: it was worth. Then there was a man, of course,
15:58
Speaker 1: who called it all a plot of friends foreigners against
16:01
Speaker 1: Britain's shore. But as he did not make it quite
16:05
Speaker 1: clear whether the chief wickedness of these aliens had lain
16:09
Speaker 1: in sticking the sign up or in pulling it down.
16:12
Speaker 1: His remarks, the remainder of which referred exclusively to the
16:16
Speaker 1: conversational misconduct of an Italian ice cream man, whose side
16:20
Speaker 1: of the case seemed insufficiently represented, carried the less weight,
16:26
Speaker 1: and then last, but the reverse of least there plunged
16:30
Speaker 1: in all the people who think they can solve a
16:32
Speaker 1: problem they cannot understand by abolishing everything that has contributed
16:37
Speaker 1: to it. We all know these people. If a barber
16:41
Speaker 1: has cut his customer's throat because the girl has changed
16:45
Speaker 1: her partner for a dance or donkey ride on Hampstead Heath,
16:49
Speaker 1: there are always people to protest against the mere institutions
16:52
Speaker 1: that led up to it. This would not have happened
16:56
Speaker 1: if barbers were abolished, or if cutlery were abolished, or
17:00
Speaker 1: if the objection felt by girls to imperfectly grown beards
17:03
Speaker 1: were abolished, or if the girls were abolished, or if
17:07
Speaker 1: heaths and open spaces were abolished, or if dancing were abolished,
17:12
Speaker 1: or if donkeys were abolished. But donkeys i fear will
17:15
Speaker 1: never be abolished. There were plenty of such donkeys in
17:19
Speaker 1: the common Land. Of this particular controversy, some made it
17:23
Speaker 1: an argument against democracy because poor George was a carpenter.
17:28
Speaker 1: Some made it an argument against alien emigration because Missis
17:33
Speaker 1: ra Ammon was a Turk. Some proposed that ladies should
17:37
Speaker 1: no longer be admitted to any lectures anywhere, because they
17:40
Speaker 1: had constituted a slight and temporary difficulty at this one
17:44
Speaker 1: without the faintest fault of their own. Some urged that
17:49
Speaker 1: all holiday resorts should be abolished. Some urged that all
17:53
Speaker 1: holidays should be abolished. Some vaguely denounced the seaside. Some
17:59
Speaker 1: still more or vaguely proposed to remove the sea. All
18:03
Speaker 1: said that if this or that stones or seaweed, or
18:06
Speaker 1: strange visitors, or bad weather or bathing machines were swept
18:10
Speaker 1: away with a strong hand, this which had happened would
18:14
Speaker 1: not have happened. They only had one slight weakness, all
18:18
Speaker 1: of them, that they did not seem to have the
18:22
Speaker 1: faintest notion of what had happened, And in this they
18:27
Speaker 1: were not inexcusable. Nobody did know what had happened. Nobody
18:33
Speaker 1: knows it to this day, of course, or it would
18:35
Speaker 1: be unnecessary to write this story. No one can suppose
18:39
Speaker 1: this story is written from any motive save that of
18:43
Speaker 1: telling the plain, humdrum truth that Queer confused cunning, which
18:48
Speaker 1: was the only definable quality possessed by hibs. However, had
18:52
Speaker 1: certainly scored a victory so far, for the tone of
18:56
Speaker 1: the weekly papers followed him with more intelligence and less.
19:01
Speaker 1: But they followed him. It seemed more and more clear
19:04
Speaker 1: that some kind of light and skeptical explanation was to
19:07
Speaker 1: be given of the whole business, and that the whole
19:10
Speaker 1: business was to be dropped. The story of the sign
19:14
Speaker 1: board and the ethical chapel of corrugated iron was discussed
19:18
Speaker 1: and somewhat disparaged in all the more serious and especially
19:21
Speaker 1: in the religious weeklies. Though the low church papers seemed
19:26
Speaker 1: to reserve their distaste chiefly for the sign board, and
19:30
Speaker 1: the high Church papers chiefly for the chapel, all agreed
19:35
Speaker 1: that the combination was incongruous, and most treated it as fabulous.
19:40
Speaker 1: The only intellectual organs which seemed to think it might
19:44
Speaker 1: have happened were the spiritualist papers, and their interpretation had
19:48
Speaker 1: not that solidity which would have satisfied mister George. It
19:54
Speaker 1: was not until almost a year after that it was
19:56
Speaker 1: felt in philosophical circles that the last word had been
19:59
Speaker 1: said on the matter. An estimate of the incident and
20:03
Speaker 1: of its bearing a natural and supernatural history occurred in
20:07
Speaker 1: Professor Widge's celebrated historicity of the petropiscatorial phenomena, which so
20:13
Speaker 1: profoundly affected modern thought when it came out in parts
20:16
Speaker 1: in the Hibbert Journal. Everyone remembers Professor Wdge's main contention
20:21
Speaker 1: that the modern critic must apply to the thomaturgics of
20:25
Speaker 1: the Lake of Tiberius the same principle of criticism which
20:29
Speaker 1: doctor Bunk and others have so successfully applied to the
20:32
Speaker 1: thomaturgics of the Cana. Narrative authorities as final as pink
20:37
Speaker 1: Antosher wrote, the Professor have now shown, with an emphasis,
20:41
Speaker 1: that no emancipated mind is entitled to question, that the
20:44
Speaker 1: Aquavinic thomaturgy at Cana is wholly inconsistent with the psychology
20:50
Speaker 1: of the Master of the Feast as modern research has
20:53
Speaker 1: analyzed it, and indeed with the whole Judeo Aramaic psychology
20:58
Speaker 1: at that stage of its development, as well as being
21:01
Speaker 1: painfully incongruous with the elevated ideals of the ethical teacher
21:05
Speaker 1: in question. But as we rise to higher levels of
21:08
Speaker 1: moral achievement, it will probably be found necessary to apply
21:12
Speaker 1: the canaic principle to other and later events in the narrative.
21:16
Speaker 1: This principle has of course been mainly expounded by Husher
21:20
Speaker 1: in the sense that the whole episode is unhistorical. While
21:24
Speaker 1: the alternative theory that the wine was non alcoholic and
21:27
Speaker 1: was naturally infused into the water can claim on its
21:31
Speaker 1: side the impressive name of mins, it is clear that
21:35
Speaker 1: if we apply the same alternative to the so called
21:37
Speaker 1: miraculous draft of fishes, we must either hold with guilp
21:41
Speaker 1: that the fishes were stuffed representations of fishes artificially placed
21:46
Speaker 1: in the lake see the Reverend wy Owises crystal vegetarianism
21:51
Speaker 1: as a world system, where this position is forcibly set forth,
21:56
Speaker 1: or we must, on the Husharian hypothesis, deprived the episcatorial
22:01
Speaker 1: narrative of all claim to historicity, whatever the difficulty felt
22:09
Speaker 1: by the most daring critics, even Puck, in adopting this
22:14
Speaker 1: entirely destructive attitude. Is the alleged improbability of so detailed
22:19
Speaker 1: a narrative being founded on so slight a phrase, as
22:22
Speaker 1: the antihistorical critics referred to it is urged by Puck
22:26
Speaker 1: with characteristic, relentless reasoning that according to Husher's theory, a
22:31
Speaker 1: metaphorical but at least noticeable remark such as I will
22:35
Speaker 1: make you fishers of men was expanded into a realistic
22:39
Speaker 1: chronicle of events which contains no mention, even in the
22:42
Speaker 1: passages evidently interpolated, of any men actually found in the
22:47
Speaker 1: nets when they were hauled up out of the sea
22:50
Speaker 1: or more properly, lagoon. It must appear presumptuous or even
22:55
Speaker 1: bad taste for any one in the modern world to
22:58
Speaker 1: differ on any subject from Puck. But I would venture
23:01
Speaker 1: to suggest that the very academic splendor and unique standing
23:05
Speaker 1: of the venerable professor, whose ninety seventh birthday was so
23:09
Speaker 1: beautifully celebrated in Chicago last year, may have forbidden him
23:14
Speaker 1: all but intuitive knowledge of how errors arise among the vulgar.
23:19
Speaker 1: I crave pardon for mentioning a modern case known to myself,
23:23
Speaker 1: not indeed by personal presence, but by careful study of
23:26
Speaker 1: all the reports, which presents a curious parallel to such
23:31
Speaker 1: ancient expansions of a text into an incident in accordance
23:35
Speaker 1: with Husher's law. It occurred at Pebblewick, in the south
23:39
Speaker 1: of England. The town had long been in a state
23:43
Speaker 1: of dangerous religious excitement. The great religious genius, who has
23:48
Speaker 1: since so much altered our whole attitude to the religions
23:51
Speaker 1: of the world, missisra Ammon, had been lecturing on the
23:55
Speaker 1: sands to thousands of enthusiastic hearers. Their meetings were often
24:00
Speaker 1: interrupted both by children's services run on the most ruthless
24:04
Speaker 1: lines of Orthodoxy, and by the League of the Red Rosette,
24:08
Speaker 1: the formidable atheist and anarchist organization. As if this were
24:13
Speaker 1: not enough to swell the whirlpool of fanaticism, the old
24:17
Speaker 1: popular controversy between the Milnion and the complete Sublapsarians broke
24:22
Speaker 1: out again on the fated beach. It is natural to
24:26
Speaker 1: conjecture that in the thickening atmosphere of theology in Pebblewick,
24:31
Speaker 1: some controversialist quoted the text an evil and adulterous generation
24:38
Speaker 1: seek for a sign, but no sign shall be given
24:42
Speaker 1: it save the sign of the prophet Jonas a mind
24:47
Speaker 1: like that of Puck will find it hard to credit,
24:50
Speaker 1: but it seems certain that the effect of this text
24:52
Speaker 1: on the ignorant peasantry of southern England was actually to
24:56
Speaker 1: make them go about looking for a sign in the
24:59
Speaker 1: sense of the those old tavern signs, now so happily disappearing,
25:05
Speaker 1: the sign of the prophet Jonas. They somehow translated in
25:09
Speaker 1: their stunted minds into a sign board of the ship
25:13
Speaker 1: out of which Jonah was thrown. They went about literally
25:17
Speaker 1: looking for the sign of the ship, and there are
25:21
Speaker 1: some cases of their suffering Smell's hallucination and actually seeing it.
25:27
Speaker 1: The whole incident is a curious parallel to the gospel narrative,
25:31
Speaker 1: and a triumphant vindication of Husher's law. Lord ivywould pay
25:37
Speaker 1: the public compliment to Professor Widge, saying that he had
25:41
Speaker 1: rolled back from his country what might have been an
25:44
Speaker 1: ocean of superstitions. But indeed poor Hibs had struck the
25:49
Speaker 1: first and stunning blow that scattered the brains of all men.
25:56
Speaker 1: End of Chapter nine