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Certain Personal Matters - The Parkes Museum · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty six of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All librevox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit librevox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Greg Giardano. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty six. The Park's Museum the place to spend
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  Speaker 1: a happy day. By way of jest, my morning daily
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  Speaker 1: paper constantly includes in its menu of today the Park's
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  Speaker 1: Museum Margaret Street, adding seductively free, and no doubt many
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  Speaker 1: a festive Jonas Chuzzlewit has preened himself for sight seeing,
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  Speaker 1: and all unaware of the multitude of Margaret Streets, surely
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  Speaker 1: only Charlotte's, of that ilk are more abundant, has started
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  Speaker 1: forth he and his feminine to find this park's museum.
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  Speaker 1: One may even conceive a rare bank holiday, thoughtfully put
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  Speaker 1: aside for the quest, and spent all vainly in the
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  Speaker 1: asking of policemen and in traversing this vast, entiresome metropolis
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  Speaker 1: from Margaret Street to Margaret Street, the freshness of the
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  Speaker 1: morning passing into the dry heat of the day, fatigue
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  Speaker 1: spreading from the feet upwards. Discussion difference denial words and
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  Speaker 1: a day of recreation, dying at last into a sunset
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  Speaker 1: of lord sulks. Such possibility was too painful to think of,
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  Speaker 1: and a philanthropic inquirer, as at last, by persistent investigation,
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  Speaker 1: won the seekers of the missing museum and open the
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  Speaker 1: way to it for all future investigators. The market Street
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  Speaker 1: in question is an apparently derelict thoroughfare opening into Great
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  Speaker 1: Portland Street. Immemorial dust is upon its pavements, and a
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  Speaker 1: profound silence broods over its vacant roadway. The blinds of
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  Speaker 1: its houses are mostly down, and where that blackness of
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  Speaker 1: some window suggests a dark interior, no face appears to
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  Speaker 1: reassure us in our doubt of humanity within. It may
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  Speaker 1: be that someone in the past, the entire population of
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  Speaker 1: the street set out on a boating party up the river,
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  Speaker 1: and was overset by steam launches, and so never returned,
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  Speaker 1: or perchance it has all been locked up for a
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  Speaker 1: long term of imprisonment, though the houses seem almost too
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  Speaker 1: respectable for that, where the glamor of the sleeping beauty
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  Speaker 1: is upon it all. Certainly we saw the figure of
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  Speaker 1: a porter in an attitude of repose, and the little
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  Speaker 1: glass lodge in the museum doorway. He may have been asleep,
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  Speaker 1: but we feared to touch him, and indeed slipped very
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  Speaker 1: stealthily by him, lest he should suddenly crumble into dust.
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  Speaker 1: And so to the museum and its wonders, this park's
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  Speaker 1: museum is a kind of armory of hygiene, a place
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  Speaker 1: full of apparatus for being healthy, in brief, a museum
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  Speaker 1: of sanitary science. To that large and growing class of
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  Speaker 1: people who take no thought of anything but what they
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  Speaker 1: eat and what they drink, and wherewithal they should be clothed,
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  Speaker 1: it should prove intensely interesting. Apart from the difficulty of approach,
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  Speaker 1: you cannot understand how it is so neglected by an
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  Speaker 1: intelligent public. You can see germicides in a model convict prison,
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  Speaker 1: Pentonville cells, in miniature statistical diagrams, and drain pipes. If
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  Speaker 1: only there was a little more about heredity, it would
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  Speaker 1: be exactly the kind of thing that is popular in
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  Speaker 1: literature now, as literature goes, and yet accepting ourselves in
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  Speaker 1: a sleeping porter, if he was sleeping in the indistinct
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  Speaker 1: and motionless outline visible through a glass door of a
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  Speaker 1: human body sitting over a book, there is not a
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  Speaker 1: suggestion or memory of living humanity about the place. The
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  Speaker 1: exhibits of food are especially remarkable. We clean the glass
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  Speaker 1: case with our sleeves and peered the most appetizing revelations.
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  Speaker 1: There are dozens of little bottles, rametically sealed, containing such
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  Speaker 1: curios as a sample of bacon common and gamin uncooked
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  Speaker 1: and then the same cooked. It looks no nicer cooked,
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  Speaker 1: Irish sausage, pork sausage, black pudding, Welsh mutton, and all
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  Speaker 1: kinds of rare and exquisite feeding. There are ever so
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  Speaker 1: many cases of this kind of thing. We saw, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: further along several good specimens of the common oyster shell,
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  Speaker 1: Austria edulis, cockle shells, and whelks, both almonds and whites.
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  Speaker 1: And then came bread stuffs. The bread stuffs are particularly
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  Speaker 1: impressive of a gray scientific aspect, a hard hoary antiquity.
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  Speaker 1: We always knew that stale bread was good for one,
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  Speaker 1: but yet the park's museum startled us with the antique
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  Speaker 1: pattern it recommended. There was a muffin two identified and
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  Speaker 1: labeled but without any Latin name, a captured crumpet, a
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  Speaker 1: collection of buns, a dinner roll, and a something novel
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  Speaker 1: to us called pumper nickel. They would rather be without,
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  Speaker 1: or rather, for the expression is ambiguous, that we had
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  Speaker 1: rather not be without, but altogether remote from. And all
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  Speaker 1: these things have been tested by an animal with the
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  Speaker 1: most painful results. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and the like. Nasty
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  Speaker 1: chemicals seem indeed to have occurred in everything he touched.
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  Speaker 1: Those sturdy mendicants who go about complaining that they cannot
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  Speaker 1: get food should visit this park's museum and see what
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  Speaker 1: food is really like and learn contentment with their lot.
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  Speaker 1: There were no real vegetables, but only the ideals of
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  Speaker 1: a firm of seedsmen made of wax and splendidly colored
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  Speaker 1: with something of the boldness and vigor of Michelangelo about
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  Speaker 1: the modeling of them. And among other food stuffs were
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  Speaker 1: sweetmeats and yellow capers, liver flukes, British wines, and snuff.
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  Speaker 1: At last, we felt replete with food stuffs and went
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  Speaker 1: on to see the models to illustrate ventilation in the
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  Speaker 1: exhibit of hygienic glazed tiles arranged around a desert lecture theater.
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  Speaker 1: Hygienic tiles stimulate the eye vigor rather than relax it.
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  Speaker 1: By any esthetic weakness, and the crematory appliances are so
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  Speaker 1: attractive as they are, it must have had such an
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  Speaker 1: added charm of neatness and brightness when a light that
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  Speaker 1: one longs to lose a relative or so forthwith for
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  Speaker 1: the mere pleasure of seeing them in operation. A winding
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  Speaker 1: staircase designed upon hygienic principles to bump your head at
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  Speaker 1: intervals takes one to a little iron gallery full of
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  Speaker 1: the most charming and varied display of cooking stoves and
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  Speaker 1: oil lamps. Here also there are flaunted the resources of
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  Speaker 1: civilization for the prevention of accidents. Which resources are for namely,
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  Speaker 1: a patent fire escape, a patent carriage pole, a coal plate,
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  Speaker 1: and a dog muzzle. But the labels, though verbose, are
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  Speaker 1: scarcely full enough. They do not tell you, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: if you wish to prevent cramp while bathing, whether the
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  Speaker 1: dog muzzle or the coal plate should be employed, Nor
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  Speaker 1: do they show how the fire escape will prevent the
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  Speaker 1: explosion of a paraffin lamp. However, this is a detail.
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  Speaker 1: We feel assured that no intelligent person will regret a
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  Speaker 1: visit to this most interesting and instructive exhibition. It offers
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  Speaker 1: you valuable hints how to live, and suggests the best
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  Speaker 1: and tidiest way in which you can, when dead, dispose
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  Speaker 1: of your body. We feel assured that the public only
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  Speaker 1: needs this intimation of its whereabouts to startle the deathlike
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  Speaker 1: slumbers of Margaret Street with an unaccustomed tumult, and the
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  Speaker 1: first to arrive will, no doubt, by legibly and elogantly
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  Speaker 1: written in the dust that covers the collection, the record
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  Speaker 1: of its discovery by Euphemia and Me end of Chapter
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  Speaker 1: twenty six. Recording by Greg Giardano, Newport, Richie, Florida,