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A Modern Utopia Chapter 7 - A Few Utopian Impressions, Sections 4-7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the seventh of A Modern Utopia, sections four through seven.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Christopher Taylor. A Modern
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  Speaker 1: Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter the seventh. A Few
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  Speaker 1: Utopian Impressions Section four wrapped up in these preoccupations as
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  Speaker 1: I am, it will certainly be the botanist who will
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  Speaker 1: notice the comparative absence of animals about us. He will
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  Speaker 1: put it in the form of a temperate objection to
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  Speaker 1: the utopian planet. He is a professed lover of dogs,
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  Speaker 1: and there are none. We have seen no horses, and
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  Speaker 1: only one or two mules on the day of our arrival,
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  Speaker 1: and there seems not a cat in the world. I
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  Speaker 1: bring my mind round to his suggestion this follows. I say,
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  Speaker 1: it is only reluctantly that I allow myself to be
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  Speaker 1: drawn from my secret musings into a discussion of utopian pets.
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  Speaker 1: I try to explain that a phase in the world's
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  Speaker 1: development is inevitable when a systematic worldwide attempt will be
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  Speaker 1: made to destroy forever a great number of contagious and
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  Speaker 1: infectious diseases, and that this will involve, for a time,
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  Speaker 1: at any rate, a stringent suppression of the free movement
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  Speaker 1: of familiar animals. Utopian houses, streets and drains will be
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  Speaker 1: planned and built to make rats, mice, and such like
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  Speaker 1: house parasites impossible. The race of cats and dogs, providing
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  Speaker 1: as it does, living fastnesses to which such diseases as plague, influenza,
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  Speaker 1: guitars and the like can retreat to sally forth again,
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  Speaker 1: must pass for a time out of freedom, and the
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  Speaker 1: filth made by horses and other brutes of the highway
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  Speaker 1: vanish from the face of the earth. These things make
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  Speaker 1: an old story to me, and perhaps explicitness suffers through
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  Speaker 1: my brevity. My botanist fails altogether to grasp what the
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  Speaker 1: disappearance of diseases means. His mind has no imaginative organ
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  Speaker 1: of that compass. As I talk, his mind rests on
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  Speaker 1: one fixed image. This presents what the botanist would probably
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  Speaker 1: call a dear old doggie, which the botanist would make
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  Speaker 1: believe did not possess any sensible odor, and it has
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  Speaker 1: faithful brown eyes and understands everything you say. The botanist
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  Speaker 1: would make believe it understood him mystically, and I figure
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  Speaker 1: his long white hand, which seems to me, in my
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  Speaker 1: more jaundiced moments, to exist entirely for picking things and
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  Speaker 1: holding a lens patting its head while the brute looked
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  Speaker 1: things unspeakable. The botanist shakes his head after my explanation
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  Speaker 1: and says quietly, I do not like your utopia. If
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  Speaker 1: there are to be no dogs. Perhaps that makes me
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  Speaker 1: a little little malicious. Indeed, I do not hate dogs,
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  Speaker 1: but I care ten thousand times more for a man
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  Speaker 1: than for all the brutes on the earth. And I
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  Speaker 1: can see what the botanist, I think, cannot that a
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  Speaker 1: life spent in the delightful atmosphere of many pet animals
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  Speaker 1: may have too dear a price. I find myself back
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  Speaker 1: again at the comparison of the botanist in myself. There
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  Speaker 1: is a profound difference in our imaginations, and I wonder
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  Speaker 1: whether it is the consequence of any character or of training,
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  Speaker 1: and whether he really is a human type or eye.
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  Speaker 1: I am not altogether without imagination, but what imagination I
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  Speaker 1: have has the most insistent disposition to square itself with
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  Speaker 1: every fact in the universe. It hypothesizes very boldly but
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, it will not gravely make believe. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the botanist's imagination is always busy with the most impossible
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  Speaker 1: make believe. That is the way with all children, I know,
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  Speaker 1: but it seems to me one ought to pass out
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  Speaker 1: of it. It isn't as though the world was an
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  Speaker 1: untidy nursery. It is a place of splendors, indescribable for
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  Speaker 1: all who will lift its veils. It may be he
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  Speaker 1: is essentially different from me, but I am much more
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  Speaker 1: inclined to think he is simply more childish. Always it
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  Speaker 1: is make believe. He believes that horses are beautiful creatures.
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  Speaker 1: For example, dogs are beautiful creatures, and that some women
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  Speaker 1: are inexpressibly lovely. And he makes believe that it is
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  Speaker 1: always so, never a word of criticism of horse or
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  Speaker 1: dog or woman, never a word of criticism of his
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  Speaker 1: impeccable friends. Then there is his botany. He makes believe
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  Speaker 1: that all the vegetable kingdom is mystically perfect and exemplary,
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  Speaker 1: that all flowers smell deliciously and are exquisitely beautiful, that
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  Speaker 1: drosera does not hurt flies very much, and that onions
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  Speaker 1: do not smell most of the universe does not interest
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  Speaker 1: this nature lover at all. But I know, and I
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  Speaker 1: am queersly in case understanding why everyone else does not
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  Speaker 1: know that a horse is beautiful in one way and
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  Speaker 1: quite ugly in another, that everything has this shot silk quality,
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  Speaker 1: and is all the finer for that. When people talk
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  Speaker 1: of a horse as an ugly animal, I think of
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  Speaker 1: its beautiful moments. But when I hear a flow of
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  Speaker 1: indiscriminate praise of its beauty, I think of such an
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  Speaker 1: aspect as one gets, for example from a dog cart,
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  Speaker 1: the fiddle shaped back, and that distressing blade of the neck,
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  Speaker 1: the narrow, clumsy place between the ears, and the ugly
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  Speaker 1: glimpse of cheek. There is indeed no beauty whatever, save
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  Speaker 1: the transitory thing that comes and comes again. All beauty
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  Speaker 1: is really the beauty of expression, is really kinetic and momentary.
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  Speaker 1: That is true even of those triumphs of static endeavor
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  Speaker 1: achieved by Greece. The Greek temple, for example, is a
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  Speaker 1: barn with a face that, at a certain angle of
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  Speaker 1: vision and in a certain light has a great call beauty.
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  Speaker 1: But where are we drifting? All such things I hold
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  Speaker 1: are cases of more and less, and of the right
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  Speaker 1: moment and the right aspect. Even the things I most esteem,
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  Speaker 1: there is no perfection. There is no enduring treasure. This
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  Speaker 1: pet dog's beautiful affection, I say, or this other sensuous
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  Speaker 1: or imaginative delight, is no doubt good, but it can
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  Speaker 1: be put aside if it is incompatible with some other
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  Speaker 1: and wider good. You cannot focus all good things together
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  Speaker 1: all right action in all wise action is surely sound
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  Speaker 1: judgment and courageous abandonment in the matter of such incompatibilities.
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  Speaker 1: If I cannot imagine thoughts and feelings in a dog's
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  Speaker 1: brain that cannot possibly be there, at least I can
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  Speaker 1: imagine things in the future of men that might be
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  Speaker 1: there had we the will to demand them. I don't
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  Speaker 1: like this utopia, the botanist repeats, you don't understand about dogs.
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  Speaker 1: To me, they are human beings and more. There used
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  Speaker 1: to be such a jolly old dog in my aunt's
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  Speaker 1: at Frognell when I was a boy. But I do
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  Speaker 1: not heed his anecdote. Something, something in the nature of
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  Speaker 1: conscience has suddenly jerked back the memory of that beer
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  Speaker 1: I drink at Hospenthal and puts an accusing finger on
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  Speaker 1: the memory I never have had a pet animal. I confess,
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  Speaker 1: though I have been fairly popular with kittens, but with
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  Speaker 1: regard to a certain petting of myself, perhaps I was
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  Speaker 1: premature about that beer I have had no pet animals.
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  Speaker 1: But I perceive if the modern utopia is going to
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  Speaker 1: demand the sacrifice of the love of animals, which is
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  Speaker 1: in its way a very fine thing, indeed so much more,
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  Speaker 1: the readily may it demand the sacrifice of many other indulgences,
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  Speaker 1: some of which are not even fine in the lowest degree.
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  Speaker 1: It is curious, this haunting insistence upon sacrifice and discipline.
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  Speaker 1: It is slowly becoming my dominant thought that the sort
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  Speaker 1: of people whose will this utopia embodies must be people
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  Speaker 1: a little heedless of small pleasures. You cannot focus all
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  Speaker 1: good things at the same time. That is my chief
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  Speaker 1: discovery in these meditations at Lacerne. Much of the rest
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  Speaker 1: of this utopia I had, in a sort of way anticipated,
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  Speaker 1: But not this. I wonder if I shall see my
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  Speaker 1: utopian self for long and be able to talk to
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  Speaker 1: him freely. We lie in the petal strewn grass under
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  Speaker 1: some judas trees beside the lake shore. As I meander
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  Speaker 1: among these thoughts, and each of us disregardful of his companion,
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  Speaker 1: follows his own associations. Very remarkable, I say, discovering that
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  Speaker 1: the botanist has come to an end with his story
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  Speaker 1: of that frogn old dog. You'd wonder how he knew,
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  Speaker 1: he says, you would I nibble a green blade? Do
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  Speaker 1: you realize quite? I ask that within a week we
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  Speaker 1: shall shall face our utopian selves and measures something of
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  Speaker 1: what we might have been. The Botanist's face clouds. He
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  Speaker 1: rolls over, sets up abruptly, and puts his lean hands
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  Speaker 1: about his knees. I don't like to think about it,
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  Speaker 1: he says. What is the good of reckoning might have been?
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  Speaker 1: Section five? It is pleasant to think of one's puzzling
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  Speaker 1: the organized wisdom of so superior a planet as this utopia,
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  Speaker 1: this moral monster state, my frankenstein of reasoning is made.
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  Speaker 1: And to that pitch we have come. When we are
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  Speaker 1: next in the presence of our discern official, he has
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  Speaker 1: the bearing of a man who faces a mystification beyond
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  Speaker 1: his powers, an incredible disarrangement of the order of nature. Here,
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  Speaker 1: for the first time in the records of utopian science,
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  Speaker 1: are two cases, not simply one, but two, And these
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  Speaker 1: in each other's company of duplicated thumb marks. This coupled
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  Speaker 1: with some cock and bull's story of an instantaneous transfer
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  Speaker 1: from some planet unknown to utopian astronomy, that he and
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  Speaker 1: all his world exists only upon a hypothesis that would
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  Speaker 1: explain every one of these difficulties absolutely is scarcely likely
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  Speaker 1: to occur. To his obviously unphilosophic mind. The official eye
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  Speaker 1: is more eloquent than the official lips and asks, almost urgently,
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  Speaker 1: what in this immeasurable universe have you managed to do
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  Speaker 1: to your thumbs? And why? But he is only a
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  Speaker 1: very inferior sort of official, indeed, a mere clerk of
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  Speaker 1: the post, and he has all the guarded reserve of
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  Speaker 1: your thoroughly unoriginal man. You are not the two persons
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  Speaker 1: I ascertained you were, he says, with the note of
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  Speaker 1: one resigned to communion with unreason. Because you, he indicates me,
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  Speaker 1: are evidently at your residence in London. I smile, that gentleman.
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  Speaker 1: He points a pin at the botanist in a manner
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  Speaker 1: that is intended to dismiss my smile once for all,
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  Speaker 1: will be in London next week. He will be returning
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  Speaker 1: next Friday from a special mission to investigate the fungoid
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  Speaker 1: parasites that have been attacking the Sankoona trees in Ceylon.
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  Speaker 1: The botanist blesses his heart. Consequently, the official size at
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  Speaker 1: the burthen of such nonsense. You will have to go
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  Speaker 1: and consult with the people you ought to be, I
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  Speaker 1: betray a faint amusement. You will have to end by
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  Speaker 1: believing in our planet, I say. He waggles a negation
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  Speaker 1: with his head. He would intimate his position as too responsible,
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  Speaker 1: a one for jesting, and both of us, in our
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  Speaker 1: several ways, enjoy the pleasure we poor humans have in
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  Speaker 1: meeting with intellectual inferiority. The Standing Committee of Identification, he says,
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  Speaker 1: with an eye on a memorandum, has remitted your case
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  Speaker 1: to the research Professor of Anthropology in the Universe of London,
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  Speaker 1: and they want you to go there if you will
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  Speaker 1: and talk to him. What else can we do, says
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  Speaker 1: the botanist. There's no positive compulsion, he remarks, but your
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  Speaker 1: work here will probably cease. Here, he pushed the neat
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  Speaker 1: slips of paper towards us. Are your tickets for London
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  Speaker 1: and a small but sufficient supply of money. He indicates
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  Speaker 1: two piles of coins and paper on either hand of
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  Speaker 1: him for a day or so. There he proceeds in
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  Speaker 1: the same dry manner to inform us we are invited
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  Speaker 1: to call at our earliest convenience, upon our doubles, and
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  Speaker 1: upon the professor who is to investigate our case. And
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  Speaker 1: then he pulls down the corners of his mouth in
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  Speaker 1: a wry, deprecatory smile, eyes us obliquely under a crumpled brow,
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  Speaker 1: shrugs his shoulders, and shows us the palms of his hands.
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  Speaker 1: On earth, where there is nationality, this would have been
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  Speaker 1: a Frenchman, the inferior sort of Frenchmen, the sort whose
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  Speaker 1: only happyiness is in the routine security of government employment.
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  Speaker 1: Section six. London will be the first utopian city center
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  Speaker 1: we shall see. We shall find ourselves there with not
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  Speaker 1: a little amazement. It will be our first experience of
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  Speaker 1: the swift, long distance travel of utopia. And I have
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  Speaker 1: an idea I know not why, that we should make
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  Speaker 1: the journey by night. Perhaps I think so because the
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  Speaker 1: ideal of long distance travel is surely a RESTful translation,
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  Speaker 1: less suitable for the active hours. We shall dine and
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  Speaker 1: gossip and drink coffee at the pretty little tables under
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  Speaker 1: the lantern lit trees. We shall visit the theater and
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  Speaker 1: decide to sup in the train, and so come at
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  Speaker 1: last to the station. There we shall find pleasant rooms
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  Speaker 1: with seats and books, luggage all neatly elsewhere, and doors
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  Speaker 1: that we shall imagine give upon a platform our close
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  Speaker 1: hooks and hats, and such like outdoor IMPEDIMENTA will be
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  Speaker 1: taken in the hall and neatly labeled for London. We
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  Speaker 1: shall exchange our shoes for slippers there, and we shall
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  Speaker 1: sit down like men in a club. An officious little
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  Speaker 1: bell will presently call our attention to a label London
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  Speaker 1: on the doorway, and an excellent phonograph will enforce the
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  Speaker 1: notice with infinite civility. The doors will open, and we
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  Speaker 1: shall walk through into an equally comfortable gallery. Where is
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  Speaker 1: the train for London? We shall ask a uniform fellow utopian.
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  Speaker 1: This is the train for London? He will say. There
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  Speaker 1: will be a shutting of doors, and the botanists and I,
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  Speaker 1: trying not to feel too childish, will walk exploring through
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  Speaker 1: the capacious train. The resemblance to a club will strike
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  Speaker 1: us both a good club. The botanist will correct me
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  Speaker 1: when one travels beyond a certain speed. There is nothing
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  Speaker 1: but fatigue in looking out of a window, and this
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  Speaker 1: corridor twice the width of its poor terrestrial brother, will
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  Speaker 1: have no need of that distraction. The simple device of
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  Speaker 1: abandoning any but a few windows, and those set high,
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  Speaker 1: gives the wall space of the long corridors to books.
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  Speaker 1: The middle part of the train is indeed a comfortable library,
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  Speaker 1: with abundant arm chairs and couches, each with its green
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  Speaker 1: shaded light and soft carpets upon the sound proof floor.
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  Speaker 1: Further on will be a news room with a noiseless
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  Speaker 1: but busy tape at one corner, printing off messages from
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  Speaker 1: the wires by the wayside, and further still rooms for
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  Speaker 1: gossip and smoking, a billiard room and the dining car. Behind.
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  Speaker 1: We shall come to bedrooms, bathrooms, the hair dresser, and
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  Speaker 1: so forth. When shall we start? I ask? Presently, as
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  Speaker 1: we return, rather like bashful yokels, to the library, and
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  Speaker 1: the old gentleman reading the Arabian Nights in the arm
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  Speaker 1: chair in the corner glances up at me with sudden curiosity.
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  Speaker 1: The botanist touches my arm and nods towards a pretty
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  Speaker 1: little lead paned window through which we see a village
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  Speaker 1: sleeping under cloudy moonlight go flashing by, then a skylit lake,
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  Speaker 1: and then a string of swaying lights gone with the
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  Speaker 1: leap of a camera shutter two hundred miles an hour.
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  Speaker 1: We resort to a dignified Chinese steward and secure our berths.
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  Speaker 1: It is perhaps terrestrial of us that we do not
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  Speaker 1: think of reading the utopian literature that lines the middle
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  Speaker 1: part of the train. I find a bed of the
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  Speaker 1: simple utopian pattern and lie for a time, thinking quite
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  Speaker 1: tranquility of this marvelous adventure. I wonder why it is
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  Speaker 1: that to lie securely in bed with the light out
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  Speaker 1: seems ever the same place wherever in space one may
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  Speaker 1: chance to be and asleep, there is no space for
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  Speaker 1: us at all. I become drowsy and incoherent and metaphysical.
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  Speaker 1: The faint and fluctuating drone of the wheels below the
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  Speaker 1: are re echoed by the flying track, is more perceptible now,
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  Speaker 1: but it is not unpleasantly loud, merely a faint tinting
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  Speaker 1: of the quiet. No sea crossing breaks our journey. There
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  Speaker 1: is nothing to prevent a channel tunnel in that other planet.
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  Speaker 1: And awake in London, the train has been in London
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  Speaker 1: some time when I wake. For these marvelous utopians have
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: discovered that it is not necessary to bundle out passengers
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: from a train in the small hours simply because they
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: have arrived. A utopian train is just a peculiar kind
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: of hotel corridor that flies about the earth while one
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: sleeps Section seven. How will a great city of utopias
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: strike us? To answer that question, well, one must needs
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: be artists and engineer, and I am neither. Moreover, one
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: must employ words and phrases that do not exist, for
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: this world still does not dream of things that may
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: be done with thought and steel. When the engineer is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: sufficiently educated to be an artist, and the artistic intelligence
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: has been quickened to the accomplishment of an engineer. How
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: can one write of these things for a generation which
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: rather admires that inconvenient and gawky muddle of iron work
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: in Flemish architecture, the London Tower Bridge, When before this
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Timorrius anticipators have written of the mighty buildings that might
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: some day be The illustrator has blended, with the poor,
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  Speaker 1: ineffectual splutter of the author's words, his powerful suggestion that
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: it amounted to simply something bulbous, florid, influent in the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: vein of the Onion and l'ard nouveaux. But here it
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: may be the illustrator will not intervene. Art has scarcely
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: begun in the world. There have been a few forerunners,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and that is all Leonardo Michelangelo. How they would have
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: exulted in the liberties of steel. There are no more
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: pathetic documents in the archives of art than Leonardo's memoranda.
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  Speaker 1: In these, one sees him again and again, reaching out,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, with empty desirou's hands, towards the unborn
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  Speaker 1: possibilities of the engineer. And Durer, too, was a modern
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: with the same turn towards creative invention. In our times,
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  Speaker 1: these men would have wanted to make viaducts, to bridge
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  Speaker 1: wild and inaccessible places, to cut and straddle great railways,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: or thwart the mountain masses of the world. You can
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: see time after time in Durer's work, as you can
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: see in the imaginary architectural landscape of the Pompeiian Walls,
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  Speaker 1: the dream of structures lighter and bolder than stone or brick,
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  Speaker 1: and yield. These utopian town buildings will be the realization
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  Speaker 1: of such dreams. Here will be one of the great
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  Speaker 1: meeting places of mankind. Here I speak of utopian London
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: will be the traditional center of one of the great
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: races in the commonalty of the world state. And here
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  Speaker 1: will be its social and intellectual exchange. There will be
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  Speaker 1: a mighty university here, with thousands of professors and tens
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  Speaker 1: of thousands of advanced students. And here great journals of
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  Speaker 1: thought and speculation mature in splendid books of philosophy and science,
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  Speaker 1: and a glorious fabric of literature will be woven in
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: shaped and with a teeming leisureliness. Put forth, here will
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  Speaker 1: be stupendous libraries and a mighty organization of museums. About
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: these centers will cluster a great swarm of people, and
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: close at hand will be another center. For I, who
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: am an Englishman, must needs stipulate that Westminster shall still
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: be a seat of world empire, one of several seats,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: if you will, where the rule and council of the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: world assembles. Then the arts will cluster round the city
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: as gold gathers about wisdom, and here Englishmen will weave
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: into wonderful prose and beautiful rhythms in subtly atmospheric forms
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the intricate, austere and courageous imagination of our race. One
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: will come into this place as one comes into a
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: noble mansion. They will have flung great arches and domes
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: of glass above the wider spaces of the town. The
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: slender beauty of the perfect metal work far overhead will
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: be softened to a fairylike unsubstantiality by the mild London air.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It will be the London air we know, clear of
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: filth and all impurity, the same air that gives our
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: October days their unspeakable clarity and makes every London twilight
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: mysteriously beautiful. We shall go along avenues of architecture that
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: will be emancipated from the last memories of the squat
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: temple boxes of the Greek, the buxom curvature of Rome.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: The Goth in us will have taken to steel and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: countless new materials as kindly as once he took to stone.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The gay and swiftly moving platforms of the public ways
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: will go past on either hand, carrying sporadic groups of people,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and very speedily we shall find ourselves in a sort
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of central space, rich with holmes and flowering bushes and statuary.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: We shall look along an avenue of trees, down a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: wide gorge, between the cliffs of crowded hotels, the hotels
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that are still glowing with internal lights, to where the
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: shining morning river streams down let out at sea. Great
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: multitudes of people will pass softly to and fro in
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: this central space. Beautiful girls and youths going to university
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: classes that are held in the stately palaces about us,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Grave and capable men and women going to the businesses,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: children me andandering along to their schools, holiday makers, lovers
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: sitting out upon a hundred quests. And here we shall
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: ask for the two we more particularly seek. A graceful
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: little telephone kiosk will put us within reach of them,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: and with a queer sense of unreality, I shall find
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: myself talking to my utopian twin. He has heard of me,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: He wants to see me, and gives me clear directions
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: on how to come to him. I wonder if my
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: own voice sounds like that. Yes, I say, then I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: will come as soon as we have been to our hotel.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: We indulge in no eloquence upon this remarkable occasion, Yet
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I feel an unusual emotional stir I trembled greatly, and
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the telephonic mouthpiece rattles as I replace it, and thence
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the botanist and I walk on to the apartments that
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: have been set aside for us, and into which the
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: poor little rolls of the property that has accumulated about
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: us in Utopia are earthly raiment, and a change of
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: linen and a light have already been delivered. As we go,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I find I have little to say to my companion,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: until presently I am struck by a transitory wonder that
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: he should have so little to say to me. I
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: can still hardly realize. I say that I am going
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: to see myself as I might have been. No, he says,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: and relapses at once into his own preoccupation. For a moment.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: My wonder as to what he should be thinking about
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: brings me near to a double self forgetfulness. I realize
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: we are at the entrance of our hotel before I
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: can formulate any further remark. This is the place, I say.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: End of chapter The seventh recording by Christopher Taylor