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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 1 Chapter 4 - The Giant Children · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter four of the Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Alexey Tolander, Davis, California. The Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter four, The Giant Children. One for a
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  Speaker 1: time at least the spreading circle for residual consequences about
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  Speaker 1: the experimental farm must pass out of the focus of
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  Speaker 1: our narrative. How for a long time a power of
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  Speaker 1: bigness in fungus and toadstool and grass and weed radiated
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  Speaker 1: from that charred but not absolutely obliterated center. Nor can
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  Speaker 1: we tell here at any lengths how these mournful spinsters,
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  Speaker 1: the two surviving hens made a wonder of and a show,
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  Speaker 1: spent their remaining years in eggless celebrity. The reader, who
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  Speaker 1: is hungry for full of details in these matters is
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  Speaker 1: referred to the newspapers of the period, to the voluminous,
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  Speaker 1: indiscriminate files of the modern recording angel. Our business lines
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  Speaker 1: of mister Bensington at the focus of the disturbance. He
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  Speaker 1: had come back to London to find himself a quite
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  Speaker 1: terribly famous man, and a night the whole world had
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  Speaker 1: changed with respec to him. Everybody understood. Cousin Jane had
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  Speaker 1: seemed knew all about it, the people in the streets
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  Speaker 1: knew all about it, the newspapers all and more. To
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  Speaker 1: meet Cousin Jane was terrible, of course, but when it
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  Speaker 1: was over, not so terrible. After all, the good woman
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  Speaker 1: had limits, even to her power of facts. It was
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  Speaker 1: clear that she had communed with herself and accepted the
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  Speaker 1: food as something in the nature of things. She took
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  Speaker 1: the line of huffy dutifulness. She disapproved highly, it was evident,
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  Speaker 1: but she did not prohibit the flight of Bensington, as
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  Speaker 1: she must have considered. It may have shaken her, and
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  Speaker 1: her worst was to treat him with bitter persistence for
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  Speaker 1: a cold he had not caught, and fatigue he had
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  Speaker 1: long since forgotten, and to buy him a new sort
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  Speaker 1: of hygienic all wool combination underwear that was apt to
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  Speaker 1: get involved and turn partially inside out and partially not,
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  Speaker 1: and as difficult to get into for an absent minded
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  Speaker 1: man as society, and so for a space, and as
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  Speaker 1: far as his convenience left leisure, he still continued to
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  Speaker 1: participate in the development of this new element in human history,
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  Speaker 1: the food of the gods. The public mind, following its
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  Speaker 1: own mysterious laws of selection, had chosen him as the
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  Speaker 1: one and only responsible inventor and promoter of this new wonder.
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  Speaker 1: It would hear nothing of redwood, and without a protest,
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  Speaker 1: it allowed coss Her to follow his natural impulse into
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  Speaker 1: a terribly prolific obscurity. Before he was aware of the
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  Speaker 1: drift of these things, mister Bensington was, so to speak,
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  Speaker 1: stark and dissected upon the hoardings. His baldness, his curious
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  Speaker 1: general pinkness, and his golden spectacles had become a national possession.
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  Speaker 1: Resolute young man, with large, expensive looking cameras and a
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  Speaker 1: general air of complete authorization, took possession of the flat
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  Speaker 1: for briefed but fruitful periods, let off flashlights in that
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  Speaker 1: they filled it for days with dense, intolerable vapor, and
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  Speaker 1: retired to fill the pages of the syndicated magazines with
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  Speaker 1: their admiral photographs of mister Bensington, complete and at home
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  Speaker 1: in his second best jacket and his slash shoes. Other
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  Speaker 1: resolute mannered persons of various ages and sexes dropped in
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  Speaker 1: and told him things about boom food. It was Punch
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  Speaker 1: first called the stuff boom food, and afterwards reproduced what
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  Speaker 1: they had said as his own original contribution to the interview.
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  Speaker 1: The thing began quite an obsession with Broadbeam, the popular humorist.
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  Speaker 1: He sent it another confounded thing he could not understand,
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  Speaker 1: and he fretted dreadfully in his efforts to laugh the
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  Speaker 1: thing down. One saw him in clubs, a great clumsy presence,
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  Speaker 1: with the evidences of his midnight oil burning manifest upon
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  Speaker 1: his large, unwholesome face. Explained to every one he could
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  Speaker 1: buttonhole these scientific chaps, you know, havn't a sense of humor.
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  Speaker 1: You know, that's what it is. This science kills it.
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  Speaker 1: He jests that Bensington became malignant relibels. An enterprising press
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  Speaker 1: cutting agency sent Bensington a long article about himself from
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  Speaker 1: a sixpenny weekly entitled a New Terror, and offered to
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  Speaker 1: supply one hundred such disturbances for a guinea. And two
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  Speaker 1: extremely charming young ladies totally unknown to him, called and
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  Speaker 1: to the speechless indignation of cousin. Jane had tea with him,
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  Speaker 1: and afterwards sent him their birthday books for his signature.
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  Speaker 1: He was speedily quite hardened to seeing his name associated
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  Speaker 1: with the most incongreous ideas in the public press, and
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  Speaker 1: to discover in the reviews articles written about boom food
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  Speaker 1: and himself in a tone of the utmost intimacy by
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  Speaker 1: people he had never heard of. And whatever delusions he
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  Speaker 1: made have cherished in the days of his obscurity about
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  Speaker 1: the pleasantness of fame were dispelled utterly and fervor. At first.
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  Speaker 1: Except for Broadbeam, the tone of the public mind was
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  Speaker 1: quite free from any touch of hostility. It did not
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  Speaker 1: seem to occur to the public mind as anything but
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  Speaker 1: a mere playful supposition that any more heraciclophobia was going
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  Speaker 1: to escape again. And it did not seem to occur
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  Speaker 1: to the public mind that the growing little band of
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  Speaker 1: babies now being fed on the food would presently be
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  Speaker 1: growing more up than most of us ever grow. The
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  Speaker 1: sort of thing that pleased the public mind was caricatures
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  Speaker 1: of eminent politicians after a course of boom feeding, uses
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  Speaker 1: of the ideas on hoardings and such edifying exhibitions as
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  Speaker 1: the dead wasps that had escaped the fire and their
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  Speaker 1: remaining hands. Beyond that, the public did not care to
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  Speaker 1: look until very strenuous efforts were made to turn its
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  Speaker 1: eyes to the remoter consequences, and even then, for a
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  Speaker 1: while its enthusiasm for actions was partial. There's always something new,
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  Speaker 1: said the public, a public so glooded with novelty that
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  Speaker 1: it would hear of the earth being split as one
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  Speaker 1: split the n apple without surprise, and I wonder what
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  Speaker 1: they'll do next. But there were one or two people
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  Speaker 1: outside the public, as it were, who did already take
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  Speaker 1: that further glance, and some it scenes, were frightened by
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  Speaker 1: what they saw there. There was young Caterham, for example,
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  Speaker 1: cousin of the Earl of Pewterstone and one of the
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  Speaker 1: most promising of English politicians, who, taking the risk of
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  Speaker 1: being thought of fattest, wrote a long article in the
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth century and after to suggest his total suppression, and
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  Speaker 1: in certain of his moods, there was Bensington. They don't
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  Speaker 1: seem to realize, he said to Cosser, No they don't,
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  Speaker 1: and de we sometimes when I think of what it means,
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  Speaker 1: this poor child of Redwood's. And of course you or
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  Speaker 1: three forty feet high, perhaps after all, ought we to
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  Speaker 1: go on with it? Go on with it, cried Cossar,
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  Speaker 1: convulsed with inelegate astonishment, and pitching his note higher than ever.
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  Speaker 1: Of course you'll go on with it. What do you
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  Speaker 1: think you were made for? Just a loaf about between
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  Speaker 1: meal times? Serious consequences, he screamed, of course, enormous, obvious, obviously,
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  Speaker 1: why man, it's the only chance you'll ever get of
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  Speaker 1: a serious consequence, and you want to shirk it. For
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  Speaker 1: a moment his Indian nation was speechless. It's done right, wicked,
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  Speaker 1: he said at last, and repeated explosively. Wicked. But Bensington
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  Speaker 1: worked in his laboratory now with more emotion than zest.
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  Speaker 1: He couldn't tell whether he wanted serious consequences to his
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  Speaker 1: life or not. He was a man of quiet taste.
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  Speaker 1: It was a marvelous discovery, of course, quite marvelous. But
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  Speaker 1: he had already become the proprietor of several acres of
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  Speaker 1: squash discredited property near Hickleybrow at a price of nearly
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  Speaker 1: ninety pounds an acre, and at times he was disposed
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  Speaker 1: to think it as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry,
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  Speaker 1: as any unambitious man could wish. Of course, he was famous,
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  Speaker 1: terribly famous, more than satisfying altogether. More than satisfying was
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  Speaker 1: the fame he had attained. But the habit of research
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  Speaker 1: was strong on him. At a moment's rare moments in
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  Speaker 1: the laboratory, chiefly he would find something else that have it,
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  Speaker 1: and causes arguments to urge him to his work. This
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  Speaker 1: little spectacle man, poised perhaps with his slashed shoes wrapped
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  Speaker 1: about the legs of his high stool and his hand
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  Speaker 1: upon the tweezer of his balanced weights, would have again
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  Speaker 1: a flash of that adolescent vision, would have a momentary
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  Speaker 1: perception of the eternal unfolding of the seed that had
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  Speaker 1: been sown in his brain, would see, as it were
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  Speaker 1: in the sky, behind the grotesque shapes and accidents of
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  Speaker 1: the present, the coming world of giants and all the
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  Speaker 1: mighty things, the future was in store, vague and splendid,
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  Speaker 1: like some glittering palace seen suddenly in the passing of
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  Speaker 1: a sunbeam far away. And presently it would be with him,
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  Speaker 1: as though that distant splendor had never shone upon his brain,
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  Speaker 1: and he would perceive nothing ahead but sinister shadows, vast
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  Speaker 1: declivities and darknesses inhospitable immensities, cold, wild and terrible things.
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  Speaker 1: Two amidst the complex and confused happenings, the impacts from
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  Speaker 1: the great outer world that constituted mister Bensidon's rain. As
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  Speaker 1: shining and as active a figure presently became conspicuous, became
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  Speaker 1: almost as it were, a leader marshal of these externalities.
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  Speaker 1: In mister Bezyton's eyes. This was doctor Winkles, that convincing
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  Speaker 1: young practitioner who has already appeared in the story as
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  Speaker 1: the means. Whereby Redwood was able to convey the food
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  Speaker 1: to his son even before the great outbreak. It was
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  Speaker 1: evident that the mysterious powders Redwood had given him had
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  Speaker 1: awakened this gentleman's interest immensely, and so soon as the
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  Speaker 1: first wast came he was putting two and two together.
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  Speaker 1: He was the sort of doctor that is in manners, immorals,
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  Speaker 1: in methods, and appearance, most succinctly and finally expressed by
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  Speaker 1: the word rising. He was large and fair, with a hard, alert,
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  Speaker 1: superficial aluminum colored eye, and hair like chalk mud. Even
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  Speaker 1: featured a muscular about the clean shaven mouth, erecting figure,
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  Speaker 1: and energetic in movement, quick in spinning on the heel.
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  Speaker 1: And he wore long frock coats, black silk ties, and
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  Speaker 1: plain gold studs and chains, and his silk hats had
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  Speaker 1: a special shape and brim that made him look wiser
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  Speaker 1: and better than anybody. He looked as young or old
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  Speaker 1: as anybody grown up. And after that first wonderful outbreak,
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  Speaker 1: he took to Bensington and redwood and the food of
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  Speaker 1: the gods with such a convincing air of proprietorship that,
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  Speaker 1: at times, in spite of the testimony of the press
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  Speaker 1: to the contrary, Bensydon was disposed to regard him as
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  Speaker 1: the original inventor the whole affair. These accidents, said Winkles,
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  Speaker 1: when Bensingen hinted at the dangers of further escapes are
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  Speaker 1: nothing nothing. The discovery is everything, properly developed, suitably handled,
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  Speaker 1: sanely controlled. We have. We have something very portentous. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: in this food of ours. We must keep our eye
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  Speaker 1: on it. We mustn't let it out of control again,
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  Speaker 1: and we mustn't let it rest. He certainly did not
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  Speaker 1: mean to do that. He was at Bensington's. Now almost
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  Speaker 1: every day Benzington, glancing from the window, would see the
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  Speaker 1: faultless echipage comes fanking up Sloane Street, and after an
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  Speaker 1: incredibly brief interval, Winkles would enter the room with a
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  Speaker 1: light strong motion and pervade it and protrude some newspapers
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and supply information and make remarks. Well, he would say,
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  Speaker 1: rubbing his hands, how are we getting on? And so
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  Speaker 1: passed the current discussion about it? Do you see? He
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  Speaker 1: would say, for example, that Cadahan has been talking about
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  Speaker 1: our stuff at the Church association. Dear me, said Bensington.
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  Speaker 1: That's a cousin of the Prime Minister, isn't it, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: said Winkles. A very able young man, very able, quite
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  Speaker 1: wrong headed, you know, violent reactionary, but thoroughly able, and
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  Speaker 1: he's evidently disposed to make capital out of this stuff
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  Speaker 1: of ours. Takes a very emphatic line, talks of our
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  Speaker 1: proposal to use it in the elementary schools, our proposal
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  Speaker 1: to use it in the elementary schools. I said something
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  Speaker 1: about that the other day, quite in passing little affair
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  Speaker 1: at a polytechnic, trying to make it clear the stuff
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  Speaker 1: was really highly beneficial, not in the slightest degree dangerous
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  Speaker 1: in spite of those first little accidents, which cannot possibly
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  Speaker 1: occur again, you know it would be rather good stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But he's taken it up. What did you say, mere
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  Speaker 1: obvious nothings, But as you see, takes it up with
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  Speaker 1: perfect gravity, treats the thing as an attack. Says there's
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  Speaker 1: already a sufficient waste of public money in elementary schools
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  Speaker 1: without this tells the story old stories about piano lessons. Again.
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  Speaker 1: You know, no one, he says, wishes to prevent the
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  Speaker 1: children of the lower classes obtaining an education suited to
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  Speaker 1: their condition. But to give them a food of this
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  Speaker 1: sort will be to destroy their sense of proportion. Utterly
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  Speaker 1: expands the topic. What good will it do? He asked
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  Speaker 1: to make four people six and thirty feet high? He
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  Speaker 1: really believes, you know that they will be thirty six
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  Speaker 1: feet high, So they would be, said Bensdon if he
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  Speaker 1: gave them our fruit at all regularly. But nobody said anything.
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  Speaker 1: I said something, But my dear Winkles, there'll be bigger,
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  Speaker 1: of course, interrupted Winkles, with an air of knowing all
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  Speaker 1: about it, and discouraging the crude ideas of Bensington. Bigger indisputably.
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  Speaker 1: But listen to what he says. Will it make them happier?
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  Speaker 1: That's his point. Curious, isn't it? Will it make them better?
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  Speaker 1: Will it be more respectful to proverly constituted authority? Is
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it fair to the children themselves? Curious how anxious his
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: sort are for justice so far as any future arrangements go.
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  Speaker 1: Even nowadays, he says, the cost of feeding and clothing
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  Speaker 1: his children is more than way of their parents can contrive.
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  Speaker 1: And if this sort of thing is to be permitted, eh,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: you see, he makes my mere passing suggestion into a
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  Speaker 1: positive proposal. And then he calculates how much a pair
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  Speaker 1: of breeches for a growing lot of twenty feet high
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  Speaker 1: or so will cost, just as though he really believed
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  Speaker 1: ten pounds. He reckons for the merest decency. Curious this
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: catahan so concrete. The honest and struggling great pair will
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: have to contribute to that, he says. He says, we
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: have to consider the rights of the parent. It's all here,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: two columns. Every parent has a right to have his
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: children brought up in his own size. Then comes the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: question of school accommodation, cost of enlarge desks and forms,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: were already too greatly burthened national schools. And to get
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: what a proletariat of hungry giants winds up with a
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  Speaker 1: very serious passage, says Enn of this wild suggestion, mere
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  Speaker 1: passing fancy of mine, you know, and misinterpreted at that,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: this wild suggestion about the school's come to nothing. That
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't end the matter. This is a strange food, so
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: strange as to seem to him almost wicked. It has
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: been scattered recklessly, he says, and it may be scattered
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  Speaker 1: again once you've taken it. It's poison unless you go
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: on with it. So it is, said Bensington, And in
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  Speaker 1: short he proposes the formation of a National Society for
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the preservation of the profit proportion of things. Ah deh.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: People are hanging on the idea like anything, But what
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: do they propose to do? Winkle shrugged his shoulders and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: threw out his hands. Former society, he said, And fuss
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: they want to make it. I leegal to manufacture this heraciclophobia,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: or at any rate to circulate the knowledge of it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I've written about a bit to show that Caterham's idea
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: of the stuff is very much exaggerated, very much exaggerated indeed,
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  Speaker 1: but that doesn't seem to check it. Curious how people
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: are turning against it, and the National Temperance Association, by
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the BYE has found it a branch for temperancing growth. HM,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: said Bensington and stroked his nose. After all that has happened,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: there's bound to be this uproar on the face of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it is the things startling. Winkles walked and about the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: room for a time, hesitated and departed. I became evident
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: there was something at the back of his mind, some
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: aspect of crucial importance to him that he waited to display.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: One days when Redwood and at Bencington were at the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: flat together, he gave them a glimpse of this something
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: in reserve. How's it all going, he said, rubbing his
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: hands together. We're getting together a sort of report for
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the Royal Society. Yes, m said Winkles very profoundly, and
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: walked to the hearth rug. Hum. But here's the point.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Ought you ought? We what ought to publish? We're not
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, said Redwood. I know, as Cossar says,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: swapping wisdom, that's the true scientific method in most cases, certainly,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: but this is exceptional. We shall put the whole thing
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: before the Royal Society in the proper way, said Redwood.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Winkle's returned to that on a later occasion. It's, in
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  Speaker 1: many ways an exceptional discovery. That doesn't matter, said Redwood.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's the sort of knowledge that could easily be subject
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: to grave abuse, grave dangers. As Cadahan put it, Redwood said,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: nothing even carelessness. You know, if we were to form
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a committee of trustworthy people to control the manufacture of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: boom food heraciclophobia, I should say we might. He paused
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: in Redwood with a certain private discomfort, pretended that he
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: did not see any sort of interrogation outside the apartments
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: of Redwood and Bensington. Winkle, in spite of the incompleteness
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of his instructions, became a leading authority upon boom food.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: He wrote letters defending its use, He made notes and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: articles explaining its possibilities. He jumped up irrelevantly at the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: meetings of the scientific and medical associations to talk about it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: He identified himself with it. He published a pamphlet called
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: The Truth about Boom Food, in which he minimized the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: whole of the Hickley brow fare almost nothing. He said
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that it was absurd to say boom food would make
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: people thirty seven feet high. That was obviously exaggerated. It
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: would make them bigger, of course, but that was all
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: within that intimate circle of two. It was chiefly evident
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: that Winkles was extremely anxious to help in the making
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: of correctly aphobia, helping correcting any proofs they might be,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of any paper they might be in preparation upon the subject,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: do anything indeed that might lead up to his participant
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in the detail of making of correctly aphobia. He was
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: continually telling them both that he felt it was a
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: big thing, that it had big possibilities if only they
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: were safeguarded in some way. And at last one day
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: he asked outright to be told just how it was made.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking over what you said, said Redwood. Well,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: said Winkles, rightly. It's the sort of knowledge that could
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: easily be subject to grave abuse, said Redwood. But I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: just see how that applies, said Winkles. It does, said Redwood.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Winkles thought it over for a day or so. Then
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: he came to Redwood's and said that he doubted if
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: he ought to give Powders about which he knew nothing.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: To Redwood, little boy, it seemed to him it was
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: uncommonly like taking really in the dark that made Redwood thoughtful.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: You've seen that. The Society for the Total Suppression of
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Boomfood claims to have several thousand members, said Winkles. Change
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to the subject. They've drafted a bill, said Winkles. They
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: got young Cadahat to take it up readily enough. They're
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: in earnest. They're forming local committees to influence candidates. They
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: want to make it penal to prepare and restore heraciclophobia
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: without special lessons and felony, matter of imprisonment without option
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to administer boomfood. That's what they call it, you know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to any adherent person under one twenty. But the collateral societies,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of people. The Society the Preservation
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of Ancient Statures is going to have mister Frederick Harrison
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: on the council. They say, you know, he's written an
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: essay about it, says it is vulgar and entirely inharmonious
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: with that revelation of humanity that is found in the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: teachings of Comte. It is the sort of thing that
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: eighteenth century couldn't have it produced even in its worse moments.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: The idea of the food never entered the head of Comte,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: which shows how wicked it really is. No one, he says,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: who really understand Comte. But you don't mean to say,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: said Wodwood, alarmed out of his disdain for Winkles. They'll
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: not do all that, said Winkles. But public opinion is
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: public opinion, and votes of votes. Everybody can see or
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: are up to a disturbing thing, and the human instinct
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: is all against disturbance. You know, nobody seems to believe
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Caterahan's idea of people thirty seven feet high who won't
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: be able to get inside a church or a meeting
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: house or any social human institution. For for all that,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: they're not so easy in their minds about it. They
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: see there's something something more than a common discovery. There is,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: said Woodwood, in every discovery. Anyhow, they're getting restive. Cadahan
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: keeps harping on what may happen if it gets loose again.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I say, over and over again, it won't and it can't.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: But there it is. And he bounced about the room
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: for a little while, as if He meant to reopen
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the topic of the secret, and then thought better of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: it and went The two scientic co mend looked at
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: each other for a space, only their eyes spoke. If
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the worst comes to the worst, said Redwood at last,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: in a strenuously calm voice. I shall get the food
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: to my little teddy with my own hands. Three. It
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: was only a few days after this that Redwood opened
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: his paper to find that the Prime Minister had promised
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: a royal commission on boomfood. This sent him newspaper in
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: hand round to Bensington's flat. Winkles, I believe is making
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: mischief to for the stuff he plays into the hands
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of Cadahan. He keeps on talking about it and what
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: it is going to do in alarming people. If he
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: goes on, I really believe he'll hamper our inquiries, even
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: as it is with this trouble about my little boy,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Bensington wished Winkles wouldn't do you notice how he has
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: dropped into the way of calling a boom food. I
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: don't like that name, said Bensington with a glance over
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: his glasses. It's just so exactly what it is to Winkles.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Why does he keep on about it. It isn't that his.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's something called booming, said Redwood. I don't understand if
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: it isn't his. Everybody's getting to think it is not
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: that that matters in the event of this ignorant, this
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: ridiculous agitation becoming serious, began Bensington. My little boy can't
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: get on without the stuff, said Redwood. I don't see
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: how I can help myself now if the worst comes
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: to the worst. A slight balancing noise lay in the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: presence of Winkles. He became visible in the middle of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the room, rubbing his hands together. I wish you'd not,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: said Bensington, looking vicious over the gold rooms. Winkles was apologetic.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Then he turned to Redwood. I'm glad to find you here,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: he began. The fact is, have you seen about this
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: royal commission? Interrupted Redwood. Yes, said Winkles, thrown out, yes,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: what do you think of it? Excellent thing, said Winkles.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Bound to stop most of this clamor thenilate the whole affair,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: shut up Cadahan. But that's not what I came round for, Redwood.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: The fact is I don't like this royal commission, said Bensington.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I can assure you it will be all right. I
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: may say, I don't think it's a breeche of confidence
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: that very possibly I may have a place on the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: commission Hm, said Redwood, looking into the fire. I could
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: put the whole thing right. I can make it perfectly
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: clear first that the stuff is controllable, and secondly that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: nothing short of a miracle is needed before anything like
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: that catastrophe at Hickleybrow can possibly happen again. This is
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: just what it was wanted, an authoritative assurance. Of course,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I could speak with more confidence if I kne you,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: but that's quite by the way, and just a present.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: There's something else, another little matter upon which I'm wanting
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to consult you, ahem. The fact is well, I happen
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to be in a slight difficulty and you can help
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: me out, Redwood. Waite raised his eyebrows and was secretly glad.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: The matter is highly confidential. Go on, said Redwood. Don't
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: worry about that. I have reasonly been entrusted with a child,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the child of an exalted personage. Winkles coughed. You're getting on,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: said Redwood. I must confess it's largely your powders and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the reputation of my success with your little boy there
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: is I cannot disguise a strong feeling against its use.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And yet I find that among the more intelligent one
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: must go quietly in these things, you know, little by little.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Still in the case of her Serene High, I mean
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: this new little patient of mine. As a matter of fact,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the suggestion came from the parent, or I should never
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: he struck Redwood as being embarrassed. I thought you had
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: a doubt of the advisibility of using these powders, said Redwood.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Merely a passing doubt. You don't propose to discontinue in
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the case of your little boy, certainly not so far
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: as I can see. It will be murder. I wouldn't
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: do it for the world. You shall have the powders,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: said Redwood. I suppose you couldn't, no fear, said Wentwood.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: There isn't a recipe. It's no good. Winkles, If you'll
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: pardon my frankness, I'll make you the powders myself just
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: as well, perhaps, said Winkles, after a momentary heart stare
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: at Redwood, just as well. And then I can assure
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: you I really don't mind in the least four. When
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Winkles had gone, Busyden came and stood on the hearth
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: rug and looked down at Redwood. Her serene highness, he remarked,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Her serene highness, said Redwood. It's the princess of Whizzer Dryburg,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: no further than a third cousin, Redwood, said Bensadon. It's
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: a curious thing to say. I know, but do you
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: think Winkles understands what just what it is we have made?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Does he really understand? Said Bensden, dropping his voice and
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: keeping his eye doorward. That in the family, the family
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: of his new patient, go on, said Redwood, Who've always been,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: if anything, a little under under the average. Yes, and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: so very tactfully undistinguished in any way. He is going
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: to produce to royal personage, an outside royal personage of
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that size you know, of Redwood. I'm not sure whether
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: this is not something almost treasonable. He transferred his eyes
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: from the door to Redwood. Redwood flung a momentary gesture,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: index finger erect at the fire. By jove, he said,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: he doesn't know that man, said Redwood, doesn't know anything.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: That was his most exasperating quality as a student. Nothing
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: He passed all his examinations, He had all his facts,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and he had just as much knowledge as a rotating
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: bookshelf containing the Times Encyclopedia. And he doesn't know anything now.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: He's winkles and incapable of really assimilating anything not immediately
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and directly related to his superficial self. He had his
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: utterly void of imagination, and as a consequence, incapable of knowledge.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: No one could possibly pass. So when the examinations would
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: be so well dressed, so well done, and so successful
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: as a doctor without that precise incapability, that's it. And
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: in spite of all he's seen and heard and been told,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: there he is. He has no idea whatever what he
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: has set going. He has got a boom on he's
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: working it well on boomfood, and some one has led
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: him into this new royal baby, and that's boomier than ever.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: And the fact that Weser Dryburgh will presently have to
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: face the gigantic problem of her thirty odd foot princess
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: none only hasn't entered his head. But couldn't it couldn't.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: They'll be a fearful row, said Bensington, And a year
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: or so so soon as they really see she is
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: going on growing unless, after their fashion, they hush it up.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: It's a lot to hush up. Rather, I wonder what
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: they'll do. They never do anything loyal tact. They're bound
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to do something. Perhaps she will o Lord, yes, they'll
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: suppress her. Such things have been known. Redwood burst into
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: desperate laughter. The redundant royalty, the bouncing babe in the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: iron mass, He said, they'll have to put her in
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the tallest tower of old weser Dreyburg Castle and make
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: holes in the ceiling as she grows from Florida floor. Well,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I'm in the very same pickle, and cass her in
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: his three boys, and well, well they'll be a fearful row,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Bensington repeated, not joining in the laughter. A fearful row,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: I suppose, he argued, you've really thought it out thoroughly, Redwood,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you're quite sure it wouldn't be wiser to warn winkles,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: wean your little boy gradually and and rely upon the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: theoretical triumph. I wish to goodness you'd spend half an
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: hour my nursery when the food's a little late, said Redwood,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: with a note of exasperation in his voice. Then you
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: wouldn't talk like that, Bensington. Besides fancy warning Winkles. No,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the tide of this thing has caught us unawares. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: whether we're frightened or whether we're not, we've got to swim,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I suppose we have, said Bensington, staring at his toes. Yes,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: we've got to swim, and your boy will have to swim.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And Cosser's boys, he's given it to all three of them.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Nothing partial about Cosser, all or nothing, and her serene
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: highness and everything. We're going out making the food. Cosser. Also,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: we'll only just in the dawn of the beginning. Redwood,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: it's evident all sorts of things are to follow, monstrous,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: great things. But I can't imagine them, Redwood, except he
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: scanned his finger nails. He looked up at Redwood with
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: eyes blind through his glasses. I've half a mind, He
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: ventured that Catahan is right at times. It's going to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: destroy the proportions of things. It's going to dislocate what
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: is in it, going to dislocate whatever it dislocates, said Redwood.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: My little boy must have the food. They heard some
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: one falling rapidly upstairs. Then Cosser put his head into
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: fea hullo, he said, as their expressions and entering, well,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: they told him about the princess. Difficult question, he remarked,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: not a bit of it. She'll grow, you'll boil'll grow
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and yells your grivetigol will grow everything like anything. What's
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: difficult about that? That's all right? A child could tell
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you that where's the bother? They tried to make it
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: clear to him, not go on with it, he shrieked.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: But you can't help yourselves now. It's what you're for.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: It's what Winkles is for. It's all right, often wanted
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: of what Winkles was for. Now it's obvious. What's the trouble?
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Disturbance obviously upset things, upset everything, finally upset every human
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: concern plays a pike staff. They're going to try and
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: stop it, but they're too late. It's their way to
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: be too late. You go on and start as much
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of it as you can. Thank God he has a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: use for you. But the conflict, said Bensington distress. I
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: don't know if you've imagined you ought to have been
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: some sort of little vegetable. Bensington said, Cossar, that's what
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you ought to have been, something growing over a rockery.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Here you are fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: think you're made for is just to set about and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: take your victuals. Do you think this world was made
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: for old woman to mump about in? Why? Anyhow, you
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: can't help yourselves? Now? Got got to go on? I
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: suppose we must, said Redwood slowly. No, said Cossar, in
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: a huge shout. No, Make as much as you can,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and as soon as you can spread it about. He
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: was inspired to a stroke a whit. He parody one
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: of Redwood's curves with a vast upward suite of his arm. Redwood,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: he said, to point the illusion, make it so five
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: there is It seems an upward limit to the pride
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of maternity, And this, in the case of missus Redwood,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: was reached when her offspring completed his sixth month of
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: terrestrial existence, broke down his high class Bacinet perambulator, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: was brought home bawling in the milk truck. Young Redwood,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: at that time weighed fifty nine and a half pounds,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: measured forty eight inches in height, and gripped about sixty pounds.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: He was carried upstairs to the nursery by the cook
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: and housemaid. After that, discovery was only a question of days.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: One afternoon, Redwood came home from his laboratory to find
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: his unfortunate wife deep in the fascinating pages of the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Mighty Atom, and at the sight of him, she put
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the book aside and ran violently forward and burst into
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: tears on his shoulder. Tell me what you've done to him,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: she willed, Tell me what you've done. Redwood took her
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: hand and led her to the sofa while he tried
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: to think of a satisfactory line of defence. It's all right,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: my dear, he said, it's all right. You're only a
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: little overwrought. It's that cheap perambulator. I've arranged for a
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: bath chair man to come round with something stout tomorrow,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: missus Redwood looked at him tearfully over the top of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: her handkerchief. A baby in a bath chair, she sobbed, Well,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: why not, it's like a cripple. It's like a young giant,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: my dear, And you've no cause to be ashamed of him.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: You've done something to him, dandy, she said, I can
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: see it in your face. Well, it hasn't stopped his
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: growth anyhow, said Redwood heartlessly. I knew, said missus Redwood,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and clenched her pocket handkerchief ball fashion in one hand.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: She looked at him with a sudden change to severity.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: What have you done to our child, Dandy? What's wrong
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: with him? He's so big? He's a monster. Nonsense, He's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: as straight and clean as a baby as ever a
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: woman had. What's wrong with him? Look at his size?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: That's all right, look at the puny little brutes about us.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: He's the finest baby. He's too fine, said missus Redwood.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: It won't go on, said Redwroad, reassuringly. It's just a start.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: He's taken. But he knew properly well would go on.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And it did. By the time this baby was twelve
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: months old, he tottered just one inch under five feet
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: high and scaled eight stone three. He was as big,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in fact as a Saint Peter's in Vaticano cherub, and
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: his affectionate clutch at the hair and features of visitors
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: became the talk of West Kensington. They had an invalid
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: chair to carry him up and down to his nursery,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: and his special nurse, a muscular young person just out
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of training, used to take him for his airings, and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a panhard eight h p hill climbing perambulator especially made
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: to meet his requirement. It was lucky in every way
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that Redwood had his expert witness connection in addition to
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: his professorship. When one got over the shock of little
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Redwood's own hormous size, he was, I am told by
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: people who used to see him almost daily turf tiffing
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and slowly about Hyde Park, a singingly bright and pretty baby.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He really cried or needed a comforter. Commonly he clutched
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: a big rattle, and sometimes he went along hailing the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: bus drivers and policemen along the road outside the railings
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: as Dada and Baba in a sociable democratic way. There
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: goes thy great boom food baby, the bus driver used
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to say, looks ealthy. The Ford passenger would remark, bottle fed.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: The bus driver would explain, they say it's old's the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: galan anda ought to be specially made for him. Very
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: healthy child, any owl, the Ford passenger would conclude. When
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Missus Redwood realized that his growth was indeed going on
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: indefinitely and logically, and this she really did for the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: first time. When the motor perambulator arrived, she gave way
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to a passion of grief. She declared she never wished
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to enter her nursery again. Which she was dead, which
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the child was dead. Wished everybody was dead. Wish she
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: had never married Redwood, wished no one ever married anybody.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Ajaxed a little, and retired to her own room, where
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: she lived almost exclusively on chicken broth for three days.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: When Redwood came to remonstrate with her, she banged pillows
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: a vout and wept and tangled her hair. He's all right,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: said Redwood. He's all the better for being big. You
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: wouldn't like him smaller than other people's children. I wanted
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: him to be like other children, neither smaller nor bigger.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I wanted him to be a nice little boy, just
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: like Georgina Phillis is a nice little girl. And he
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: wanted to bring him up nicely, in a nice way.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And here he is, and the unfortunate woman's voice broke,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: wearing number four grown up shoes and being wheeled about
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: by a boo boo petroleum. I can never love him,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: she wailed, never he's too much for me. I can
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: never be a mother to him such as I mean
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: meant to be. But at last they contrived to get
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: her into the nursery, and there was Edward Monson Redwood
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Pantagruel was only a later nick name, swinging in his
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: specially strengthened rocking chair and smiling and talking goo and wow,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and the heart of missus Redwood warmed again to her child,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and she went and held him in her arms and wept.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: They've done something to you, she slubbed. And you'll grow
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and grow, dear, But whatever I can do to bring
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you up nice, I'll do for you, whatever your father
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: may say. And Redwood, who'd helped to bring her to
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the door, went down the passage much relieved. Eh, but
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: it's a base job, this being a man with women
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: as they are. Six before the year was out, there
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: were an addition of Redwood's pioneer vehicle, quite a number
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: of motive perambulators to be seen in the west of London.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I am told there were as many as eleven, but
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the most careful inquiries yielded trustworthy evidence of only six
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: within the metropolitan area. At that time, it would seem
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the stuff acted differently upon different types of constitution. At first,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: heraclophobia was not adapted to injection, and there can be
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: no doubt that quite a considerable proportion of human beings
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: are incapable of absorbing this substance in the normal course
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: of digestion. It was given, for example, to Winkle's youngest boy,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: but he seems to have been as incapable of growth
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: as if Redward was right, his father was incapable of
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: knowledge Others. Again, according to the Society for the total
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: suppression of boom, food became in some inexplicable way corrupted
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: by it, and perished at the onset of infantile disorders.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: The Cosser boys took it to it with amazing avidity.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Of course, a thing of this kind never comes with
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: absolutess simplicity of application into the life of man. Growth
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: in particular is a complex thing, and all generalizations must
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: need be a little inaccurate. But the general law of
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: food would seem to be this, that when it could
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: be taken into the system in any way, it stimulated
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it in very nearly the same degree. In all cases.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It increased the amount of growth from six to seven times,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and it did not go beyond that. Whatever amount of
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the food and excess was taken, excess of heraclophobia, indeed
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: beyond the necessary minimum led it was found to morbid
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: disturbances of nutrition, to cancer and tumors, ossifications and the like.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And once growth upon the large scale had begun, it
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: was soon evident that it could only continue upon that scale,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: and that the continuous administration of a heracllyophoebia in small
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: but sufficient doses was imperative. If it was discontinued while
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: growth was still going on, there was first a vague
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: restlessness and distress, then a period of voracity, as in
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the case of the young rats at Hankey, and then
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the growing creature had a sort of exaggerated anemia and
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: sickened and died. Plants suffered inness simil away. This, however,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: applied only to the growth period. So soon as adolescence
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: was attained in plants, this was represented by the formation
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of the first flower buds. They need an appetite for
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: heraclophobia diminished, and so soon as the plant or animal
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: was fully adult, it became altogether independive in any further
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: supply of the food. It was as it were completely
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: established on the new scale. It was so completely established
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: on the new scale that as the thistles about Hickley
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: brow on the grass of the Downside already demonstrated its seed,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: produced giant offspring after its kind, and presently a little
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Redwood pioneered the new race. First child of all who
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: ate the food, was calling about his nursery, smashing furniture,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: biting like a horse, pinching like a vice, and bawling
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: gigantic baby talk at his nanny and mammy and the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: rather scared and awestricken daddy who had set this mischief going.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: The child was born with good intentions. Pada be good,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Be good, he used to say, as the breakables flew
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: before him. Pada was his rendering of pantagru, the nickname
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Redwood imposed on him and Cossar, disregarding certain ancient lights
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that presently led to trouble. Did after a conflict with
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the local building regulations, keept building on a vacant piece
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: of ground adjacent to Redwood's home, a comfortable, well lit
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: play room, schoolroom, and nursery for their four boys. Sixty
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: feet square about this room was and forty feet high.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Redwood fell in love with that great nursery as he
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and Cosser built it, and his interest in courage faded
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: as he had never dreamt it could fade before the
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: pressing needs of his son. There as much, he said,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: in fitting a nursery much, the walls, the things in it,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: they will all speak to this new mind of ours
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: a little more, a little less eloquently, and teach it,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: or fail to teach it, a thousand things, obviously, said Cossar,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: reaching hastily for his hat. They worked together harmoniously, but
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Redwood supplied most of the educational theory required. They had
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the walls and woodwork painted with a cheerful vigor. For
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the most part, as slightly warned, white prevailed, but there
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: were bands of bright, clean color to enforce the simple
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: lines of construction. Clean colors we must have, said Redwood,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: And in one place had an eight horizontal band of
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: squares in which crimson and purple, orange and lemon, blues
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and greens, and many hues and many shades did themselves.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Honor these squares the giant children could arrange and re
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: arrange at their pleasure. Decorations must follow, said Redwood. Let
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: them first get the range of all the tents, and
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: then this may go. There is no reason why one
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: should bias them in favor of any particular color or design.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Then the place must be full of interest, said Redwood.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Interest his food for a child, and blankness, torture and starvation.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: He must have pictures galore. There were no pictures hung
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: frames were provided into which new pictures would come and pass,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: had passed. There was one window looked down the length
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: of the street. And in addition, for an added interest,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: camera of skura that watched the Kensington High Street and
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: not a little of the gardens in one corner that
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: most worthy implement an avocus four feet square, especially strength
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and piece of iron monkery with rounded corners awaded the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: young giants incipient competitions. There were few wooly lambs and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: such like idols, but instead Cosser, without explanation, have brought
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: one day in three four wheelers a great number of toys,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: all just too big for the coming children to swallow,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: that could be piled up arranged in rows, rolled about, bidden,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: made to flap and rattle, smacked together, felt, oval, pulled out, open, closed,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and mauled, and experimented with to an interminable extent. There
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: were many bricks of wood and diverse colors, oblong and cuboid,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: bricks of Polish China, bricks of transparent glass, and bricks
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: of India rubber. There were slabs and slates. There were cones,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: truncating cones and cylinders. There were oblate and prolate spheroids,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: balls of varied substances, solid and hollow. Many boxes of
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and fitting lids, and one or two to catch and lock.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: There were bands of elastic and leather, and a number
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: of rough and sturdy little objects of a size together
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: a man. Give him these, said Cosser, one at a time.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: These things redwood, arranged in a locker in one corner
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: along one side of the room, at a convenient height
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: for a six or eight foot child. There was a
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: blackboard on which the youngsters might flourish in white and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: colored chalk, and near by a sort of drawing block,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: from which sheet after sheet might be torn, and on
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: there was furnished with great carbonish pencils of varying hardness,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: and a copious supply of paper on which the boys
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: might first scribble and then draw more neatly, and more
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of a redwood gave orders. So far ahead did his
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: imagination go for especially large tubes of liquid paint and
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: boxes of pastels. Against the time when they should be needed,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: he laid in a cask or so of plasticcene and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: modeling clay. At first he and his tutors shall model together,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: he said, And when he is more skillful, he shall
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: copy casts and perhaps animals. And that reminds me. I
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: must have made for him a box of tools. Then books,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I shall have to look out a lot of books
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: to put in his way, and they will have to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: be big type. Now what sort of books will he need?
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: There is his imagination to be fed. That, after all,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: is the crown of every education, the crown as sound
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: habits of and conduct are the throne. No imagination at all,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: its brutality. A base imagination is lust and cowardice. But
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: a noble imagination is God walking the earth again. He
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: must stream too, of a dainty fairy land, of all
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the quaint little things of life in due time. But
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: he must feed chiefly on the splendid reel. He shall
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: have stories of travels throughout the world, travels and adventures,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and how the world was won. He shall have stories
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done, of animals
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and birds and plants and creeping things. Great books about
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the deeds of the sky and the mystery of the sea.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: He shall have histories and maps of all the empires
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the world has seen, pictures and stories of all the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: tries and habits and customs of men. And he must
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: have books and pictures to quicken his sense of beauty,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: settle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: of bird and tendril, unfalling flower, and Western pictures too,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: pictures of gracious men and women, sweet groupings, and broad
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: visuws of land and sea. He shall have books on
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the buildings of houses and palaces. He shall plan rooms
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and invent cities. I think I must give him a
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: little thiet. Then there is music. Redwood thought that over
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: and decided that his son might best begin with a
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: very pure sounding harmonicon of one octave, to which afterwards
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: there could be an extension. He shall play with it first,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: sing to it, and give names to the notes, said Redwood.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: And afterwards he stared up at the window sill overhead
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: and measured the size of the roar with his eye.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: They'll have to build his piano in here, he said,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: bring it in pieces. He hobbed about amidst his preparations,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a pensive, dark little figure. If he could have seen
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: him there, he would have looked to you like a
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: ten inch man amidst common nursery things. A great rug. Indeed,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: it was a turkey carpet, four hundred square feet of it,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: upon which young Redwood was soon to crawl. Stretched to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the grill guarded electric radiator that was to warm the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: whole place. A man from Cossars hung amidst scaffolding overhead,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: fixing the great frame that was to hold the transitory pictures.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: A bloting paper book for plant specimens, as big as
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a house door, leant against the wall, and from it
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: projected a gigantic stalk, a leaf edge or so, and
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: one flower of chickweed, all that gigantic signs that was
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: soon to make Earshot famous throughout the botanical world. A
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: sort of incredulity came to Redwood as he stood among
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: these things. If it really is going on, said Redwood,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: stirring up with the remote ceiling. From far away, came
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: a sound like the bellowing of a maffickin bull, almost
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: as if in answer, it's going on all right, said Redwood. Evidently,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: there followed resounding blows upon a table, followed by a
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: vast crowing shout, goloo, bazu biz. The best thing I
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: can do, said Redwood, following out some divergent line of
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: thought is to teach him myself. The beating became more insistent.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: For a moment it seemed to Redwood that it caught
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: the rhythm of an engine's throbbing the engine, he could
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: have imagined, of some great train of events that bore
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: down upon him. Then a descendant flight of sharper beats
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: broke up that effect and were repeated. Come in, he cried,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: perceiving that some one rapped, and the door that was
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: big enough for a cathedral opened slowly a little way.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: The new winch ceased to creak, and Benzingdon appeared in
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: the crack, gleaving benevolently under his protruded baldness and over
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: his glasses. I ventured round to see, he whispered in
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: a coffeevidently affrative manner. Come in, said Redwood, and he did,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: shutting the door behind him. He walked forward, hands behind
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: his back, advanced a few steps, and peered up with
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: a bird like movement at the dimensions about him. He
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Every time I come in, he said,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: with a sedued note in his voice, it strikes me
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: as big. Yes, said Redwood, surveying it all again, also
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: as if in an endeavor to keep hold of the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: visible impression. Yes, they're going to be big too, you know,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I know, said Bensington, with a note that was nearly
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: all very big. They looked at one another, almost as
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: it were, apprehensively very big, indeed, said Bensington, stroking the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: bridge of his nose, and with one eye that watched
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Redwood doubtfully for a confirmatory expression. All of them, you know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: fearfully big. I don't seem able to imagine, even with this,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: just how big they're all going to be. End of
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter four of the Food of the Gods
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. Recording by alexey To Lander, Davis, California.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Www dot alextalander dot com