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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 1 Chapter 2 - The Experimental Farm · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter two 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, pleads as at LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Alexeytlander, Davis, California. The Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wills,
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  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter two, The Experimental Farm One. Mister Bensington
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  Speaker 1: proposed originally to try this stuff so soon as he
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  Speaker 1: was really able to prepare it upon tadpoles. One always
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  Speaker 1: does to try this sort of thing upon tad boles
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  Speaker 1: to begin with, this being what tadpoles are for, And
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  Speaker 1: it was agreed that he should conduct the experiments on
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  Speaker 1: not Redwood, because Redwood's laboratory was occupied with the labilistic
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  Speaker 1: apparatus and animals necessary for an investigation into the diurnal
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  Speaker 1: variation in the budding frequency of the young bull calf,
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  Speaker 1: an investigation that was yielding curves of an abnormal and
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  Speaker 1: very perplexing sort. The presence of glass globuls of tadpoles
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  Speaker 1: was extremely undesirable while this particular research was in progress.
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  Speaker 1: But when mister Bensington conveyed to his cousin Jane something
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  Speaker 1: of what he had in mind. She put a prompt
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  Speaker 1: veto upon the importation of any considerable number of tadpoles
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  Speaker 1: or any such experimental creatures into their flat. She had
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  Speaker 1: no objection whatever to his use of one of the
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  Speaker 1: rooms of the flat for the purposes of a non
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  Speaker 1: explosive chemistry that, so far as she was concerned, came
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  Speaker 1: to nothing. She let him have a gas furnace and
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  Speaker 1: a sink, and a dust tight cupbet of refuge from
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  Speaker 1: the weekly storm of cleaning she would not forego, And
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  Speaker 1: having known people addicted to drink, she regarded his solicitude
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  Speaker 1: for distinction in learned societies as an excellent substitute for
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  Speaker 1: the course of form depravity. But any sort of living
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  Speaker 1: things in quantity wriggling, as they were bound to be
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  Speaker 1: alive and smelly dead, she could not and would not abide.
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  Speaker 1: She said, these things were certain to be unhealthy, and
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  Speaker 1: Bensington was notoriously a donilicup man, it was nonsense to
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  Speaker 1: say he wasn't. And when Bensingden tried to make the
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  Speaker 1: enormous importance of this possible to scaks, very clear. She
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  Speaker 1: had said that it was all very well, But if
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  Speaker 1: she consented to his making everything nasty and wholesome in
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  Speaker 1: the place, and that was what it all came to,
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  Speaker 1: then if she was certain, he would be the first
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  Speaker 1: to complain. And mister Benston went up and down the room,
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  Speaker 1: regardless of his corns, and spoke to her quite firmly
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  Speaker 1: and angrily, without the slightest effect. He said that nothing
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  Speaker 1: ought to stand in the way of the advancement of science,
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  Speaker 1: and she said the advancement of science was one thing,
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  Speaker 1: and having a lot of tadpoles in a flat was another.
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  Speaker 1: He said that in Germany it was an ascertained fact
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  Speaker 1: that a man with an idea like his would at
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  Speaker 1: once have twenty thousand properly fitted cubic feet of laboratory
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  Speaker 1: place at his disposal, and she said she was glad,
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  Speaker 1: and always had been glad, that she was not a German.
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  Speaker 1: He said that it would make him famous for river,
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  Speaker 1: and she said it was much more likely to make
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  Speaker 1: him ill to have a lot of tadpoles in a
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  Speaker 1: flat like theirs. He said he was master in his
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  Speaker 1: own house, and she said that rather than wait on
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  Speaker 1: a lot of tadpoles, she'd go as a matron to
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  Speaker 1: a school. And then he asked her to be reasonable,
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  Speaker 1: and she asked him to be reasonable then and give
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  Speaker 1: up all this about tadpoles. And she said she might
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  Speaker 1: respect his ideas, and she said not if they were smully,
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  Speaker 1: she wouldn't. And then he gave way completely and said,
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  Speaker 1: in spite of the classical remarks of Huxley upon the subject,
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  Speaker 1: a bad word, not a very bad word it was,
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  Speaker 1: but bad enough. And after that she was greatly offended
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  Speaker 1: and had to be apologized to, and the prospect of
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  Speaker 1: ever trying the food of the gods upon tadpoles in
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  Speaker 1: their flat at any rate vanished completely in the apology.
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  Speaker 1: So Bensington had to consider some of the other way
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  Speaker 1: of carrying out these experiments and feeding that would be
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  Speaker 1: necessary to demonstrate his discovery. So as soon as he
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  Speaker 1: had his substance isolated and prepared for some days, he
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  Speaker 1: meditated upon the possibility of boarding out his tadpoles with
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  Speaker 1: some trustworthy person, And then the chance sight of the
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  Speaker 1: phrase in a newspaper turned his thoughts to an experimental
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  Speaker 1: farm and chicks. Directly he thought of it. He thought
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  Speaker 1: of it as a poultry farm. He was suddenly taken
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  Speaker 1: with a vision of wildly growing chicks. He conceived a
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  Speaker 1: picture of coops and runs outsides, and still more outsized
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  Speaker 1: coops and runs. Progressively larger chicks are so accessible, so
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  Speaker 1: easily fed, and observed, so much drier to handle a
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  Speaker 1: measure that for his purpose tadpoles seemed to him now
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  Speaker 1: in comparison with them, quite wild and uncontrollable beasts. He
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  Speaker 1: was quite puzzled to understand why he had not thought
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  Speaker 1: of chicks instead of tadpoles from the beginning one of
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  Speaker 1: the other things. It would have saved all this trouble
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  Speaker 1: with his cousin Jane. And when he suggested this to Redwood,
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  Speaker 1: Redwood quite agreed with him. Redwood said, in working so
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  Speaker 1: much upon needlessly small animals, he was convinced experimental physiologists
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  Speaker 1: made a great mistake. It is exactly like making experiments
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  Speaker 1: in chemistry with an insufficient quantity of material, arabs of
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  Speaker 1: observation and manipulation become disproportionately large. It was of extreme importance,
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  Speaker 1: just at present that scientific men should assert their right
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  Speaker 1: to have their material big. That was why he was
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  Speaker 1: doing his present series of experiments at the Bond Street
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  Speaker 1: College upon bull calves, in spite of a certain amount
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  Speaker 1: of inconvenience to the students and professors of other subjects
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  Speaker 1: caused by their incidental levity in the corridors. But the
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  Speaker 1: curves he was getting were quite exceptionally interest and would,
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  Speaker 1: when published amply justify his choice. For his own part,
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  Speaker 1: were it not for the inadequate endowment of science in
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  Speaker 1: this country, he would never, if he could avoid it,
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  Speaker 1: work on anything small than a whale. But a public
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  Speaker 1: bavarium on a sufficient scale to render this possible, was
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  Speaker 1: he feared at present in this country at any rate
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  Speaker 1: a utopian demand in Germany, et cetera. As Redwood's bull
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  Speaker 1: calves needed his daily attention. The selection and equipment of
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  Speaker 1: the experimental farm fell largely on Bensington. The entire cost
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  Speaker 1: also was it was understood to be defrayed by Bensington,
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  Speaker 1: at least until a grant could be obtained. Accordingly, he
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  Speaker 1: alternated his work in the laboratory with his flat with
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  Speaker 1: farm hunting up and down the lines that run southward
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  Speaker 1: out of London, and his peering spectacles, his simple baldness
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  Speaker 1: and his lacerated cloth shoes filled the owners of numerous
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  Speaker 1: undesirable properties with vain hopes, and he had advertised in
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  Speaker 1: several daily newspapers and Nature for a responsible couple married, punctual,
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  Speaker 1: active and used to poultry to take entire charge of
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  Speaker 1: experimental farm of three acres. He found the place he
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  Speaker 1: seemed in need of at Hickleybrough, near Ershot in Kent.
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  Speaker 1: It was a little, queer, isolated place in a dell,
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  Speaker 1: surrounded by old pine woods that were blacken forbidding at night.
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  Speaker 1: A humped shoulder of down cut it off from the sunset,
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  Speaker 1: and a gaunt well with a shattered penthouse dwarf the
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  Speaker 1: dwelling the little house was creepiless, several windows were broken,
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  Speaker 1: and the cart shed had a black shadow at midday.
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  Speaker 1: It was a mile and a half from the end
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  Speaker 1: house of the village, and its loneliness was very doubtfully
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  Speaker 1: relieved by an ambiguous family of echoes. The place impressed
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  Speaker 1: Bensington as being eminently adapted to the requirements of scientific research.
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  Speaker 1: He walked over the premises, catching out coops and runs
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  Speaker 1: with a sweeping arm, and he found the kitchen capable
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  Speaker 1: of accommodating a series of incubators. And foster mothers with
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  Speaker 1: a very minimum of alteration. He took the place there,
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  Speaker 1: and then on his way back to London, he stopped
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  Speaker 1: at Dunting Green and closed with an eligible couple that
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  Speaker 1: had answered his advertisements, and that same evening he succeeded
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  Speaker 1: in ice, relating a sufficient quantity of heracleophobia one to
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  Speaker 1: more than justify these engagements. The eligible couple, who were
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  Speaker 1: destined under mister Bensington to be the first almoners on
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  Speaker 1: Earth of the food of the Gods, were not very
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  Speaker 1: perceptibly aged, but also extremely dirty. This latter point mister
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  Speaker 1: Bensington did not observe, because nothing destroys the powers of
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  Speaker 1: general observation quite so much as a life of experimental science.
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  Speaker 1: They were named Skinner, mister and Missus Skinner, and mister
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  Speaker 1: Benson interviewed them in a small room with hermetically sealed windows,
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  Speaker 1: a spotted over mantle looking glass, and some alien calciolar arias.
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  Speaker 1: Missus Skinner was a very little old woman capitalists, with
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  Speaker 1: dirty white hair drawn back very very tightly from her
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  Speaker 1: face that had begun by being chiefly and was now
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  Speaker 1: through the loss of teeth and chin, and the wrinkling
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  Speaker 1: up of everything else, ending by being almost exclusively nose.
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  Speaker 1: She was dressed in slate color, so far as her
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  Speaker 1: dress had any color, slashing one place with red flannel.
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  Speaker 1: She let him in and talked to him guardly, im
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  Speaker 1: peered at him round and over her nose, while Missus Skinner,
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  Speaker 1: she alleged, made some alteration in his toilet. She had
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  Speaker 1: one tooth that got into her articulations, and she held
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  Speaker 1: her two long wrinkled hands nervously together. She told mister
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  Speaker 1: Bensington that she had managed fowls for years and knew
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  Speaker 1: all about incubators. In fact, they themselves had run a
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  Speaker 1: poultry farm at one time, and it had only failed
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  Speaker 1: at last through the want of pupils. It's the pupils
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  Speaker 1: as pay, said Missus Skinner. Mister Skinner, when he appeared,
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  Speaker 1: was a large faced man with a lisp and a
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  Speaker 1: squint that made him look over the top of your head,
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  Speaker 1: slash slippers that appealed to mister Bensington's sympathies, and a
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  Speaker 1: manifold shortness of buttons. He held his coat and shirt
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  Speaker 1: together with one hand and traced patents on the black
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  Speaker 1: and gold tablecloth with the index vinegar of the other,
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  Speaker 1: while his disengaged eye watched mister Bensington's sword of Damocles,
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  Speaker 1: so to speak, with an expression of sad detachment. You
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  Speaker 1: don't want to run this farm for profit, no fur,
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  Speaker 1: it's all the same their experiments precisely, he said, they
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  Speaker 1: could go to the farm at once. He was doing
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  Speaker 1: nothing at Dunton Green except the little tailoring. It isn't
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  Speaker 1: the smart place I thought it was. And what I
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  Speaker 1: get I since tharkly worth having, he said, though, if
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  Speaker 1: it is any convenience to you for us to come.
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  Speaker 1: And in a week mister and Missus Skinner were installed
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  Speaker 1: in the farm, and the jobbing carpenter from Hickleybrow was
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  Speaker 1: diversifying the task of erecting runs and hen houses with
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  Speaker 1: a systematic discussion of mister Bensington. I haven't seen much
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  Speaker 1: of him yet, said Missus Skinner, but as far as
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  Speaker 1: I can make him out, he seems to be a
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  Speaker 1: stupid old fool. I thought you seemed a bit dotty,
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  Speaker 1: said the carpenter from Hickleybrow. He fancied himself about poultry,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Skinner. Oh my goodness, you'd think nobody knew
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  Speaker 1: nothing about poultry. Stepped in he looks like an end,
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  Speaker 1: said the HOAt carpenter from Hickleybrow, What with them spectacles
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  Speaker 1: of his? Mister Skinner came closer to the carpenter from
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  Speaker 1: Hickley Brow, and spoke in a confidential manner, And one
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  Speaker 1: sad eye regarded the distant village, and one was bright
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  Speaker 1: and wicked, got to be measured every blessed day, every
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  Speaker 1: blessed in his aides. Though as thee these broke properly,
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  Speaker 1: what oh eh, every blessed and every blessed day. And
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  Speaker 1: missus Skinner put up his hand to laugh behind it
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  Speaker 1: in a fine and contagious manner, and humped his shoulders
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  Speaker 1: very much, and only the other eye of him failed
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  Speaker 1: to participate in his laughter. Then, doubting if the carpenter
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  Speaker 1: had quite got the point of it, he repeated in
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  Speaker 1: a penetrating whisper message, He's worth than our old governor.
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  Speaker 1: I'm dreaded if he ain't, said the carpenter from Hickley Brow. Two.
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  Speaker 1: Experimental work is the most tedious thing in the world,
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  Speaker 1: unless it be the reports of it in the philosophical transactions.
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  Speaker 1: And it seemed a long time to mister Bensington before
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  Speaker 1: his dream of enormous possibilities was replaced by a crumb
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  Speaker 1: of realization. He had taken the experimental farm in October,
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  Speaker 1: and it was May before the first inklings of success began.
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  Speaker 1: Erectly Aphobia one and two and three had to be
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  Speaker 1: tried and failed. There was trouble with the rats of
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  Speaker 1: the experimental farm, and there was trouble with the skin skinners.
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  Speaker 1: The only way to get Skinner to do anything he
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: was told to do was to dismiss him. That he
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  Speaker 1: would nib his unshaven chin, who was always unshaven, most
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  Speaker 1: miraculously and yet never bearded, with a flattened hand, and
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  Speaker 1: look at mister Bensington with one eye and over him
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  Speaker 1: with the other, and say, ooh, of clitha, if you're thereous.
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  Speaker 1: But at last success dawned and its herald was a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: letter in the long, slender handwriting, And mister Skinner, the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: new brood are out roast, mister Skinner. And don't quite
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: like the look of them, growing very rank, quite unlike
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  Speaker 1: what the similar lot was before your last directions was given.
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  Speaker 1: The last before the cat got them was very nice,
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  Speaker 1: stocky chick. But these are growing like thistles. I never
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: saw they picked so hard, striking above boot top that
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  Speaker 1: I'm unable to give exact measures as requested. They are
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  Speaker 1: regular giants and eating as such. We shall want more
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  Speaker 1: corn very soon, for you never saw such chicks eat
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  Speaker 1: bigger than bantams. Going on to this rate, they ought
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  Speaker 1: to be a bird for show rank as they are
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  Speaker 1: plymouth rocks won't be in it. Had a scare last
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  Speaker 1: night thinking that cat was at them, and when I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: looked out at the window, could have sworn I see
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: her getting in under the wire. The chicks was all
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  Speaker 1: awake and picking about hungry when I went out, but
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: could not see anything of the cat. So he gave
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: them a peck of corn and fastened up safe. Shall
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: be glad to note the feeding to be continued as directed.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Fuji mixed his pretty near all gone, and did not
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: like to mix any more myself on account of the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: accident with the pudding. With best wishes from us both,
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  Speaker 1: and soliciting continuance of esteemed favors, respectfully, Your's Alfred Newton Skinner.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: The allusion towards the ann referred to a milk pudding
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: with which some heraciclophobia two had got itself mixed with
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: painful and very nearly faded results to the skinners. But
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: mister Bensington, reading their lines, saw in this rankness of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: growth the attainment of his long salt gull. The next
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: morning he alighted at Ertshot station, and in the bag
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: in his hand he carried sealed in three tins, as
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: supply of the food of the Gods, sufficient for all
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the chicks in Kent. It was a bright and beautiful morning,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: late in May, and his corns were so much better
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that he resolved to walk through Hickley Brow to his
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: It was three miles and a half to altogether through
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  Speaker 1: the park and villages, and then along the green glades
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of the Hickley Brow Preserves. The trees were all dusted
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: with the green spangles of a high spring. The hedges
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: were full of stitchwort and campion, and the woods of
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: blue hyacinths and purple orchid. And everywhere there was a
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: great noise of birds, thrushes, black birds, roorbins, finches and
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: many more. And in one warm corner of the park
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: some bracken was unrolling, and there was a leaping and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: rushing of fallow deer. These things brought back to mister Bensington,
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  Speaker 1: his early and forgotten delight in life before him, the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: promise of his discovery grew bright and joyful, and it
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: seemed to him that indeed he must have come upon
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the happiest day in his life. And when in the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: sunlit run by the sandy bank, under the shadow of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the pine trees, he saw the chicks that had eaten
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the food he had mixed for them, gigantic and gawky,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: better already than many a hen, that is, married and settles,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and were still growing still in their first soft yellow plumage,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: just faintly marked with brown along the back. He knew,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: indeed that his happiest day had come. At mister Skinner's urgency,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: he went into the runs, But after he had been
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: pecked through the cracks in his shoes once or twice,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: he got out again and watched these monsters through the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: wire netting. He peered close to the netting and followed
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: their movements as though he had never seen a check
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: before in his life. What they'll be when they're grown up,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: It's impossible to think, said mister Skinner. Big as a horse,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: said mister Bensleton. Pretty near, said mister Skinner. Several people
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: could dine off a wing, said mister Bensington. They cut
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: up into joints like butcher's meat. They won't go on
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: growing at diff paith, though, said mister Skinner. No, said
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: mister Benson. No, said missus Skinner, I know this thought.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: They begin rank, but they don't go on bless you. No,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: there was a pause. It's management, said mister Skinner modestly.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Mister Bensdon turned his glasses on him. Suddenly we got
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: him almost as big as the other place, said mister Skinner,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: with his better eye, piously uplifted and letting himself go
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a little. Me and the missif. Mister Bensingdon made his
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: usual general inspection of the premises, but he speedily returned
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to the new run. It was, you know, in truth,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: ever so much more than he had dared to expect.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: The course of science is so tortuous and so slow,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: after the clear promises and before the practical realization arrives.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: That comes almost always year after year of intricate contrivance.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And here here was the food of the gods, arriving
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: after less than a year of testing. It seemed too good,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: too good, that hope deferred, which is the daily food
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: of the in scientific imagination, was to be his. No
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: more so, at least it seemed to him. Then he
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: came back and stared at these stupendous chicks of his
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: time after time. Let me see, he said, they're ten
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: days old, and by the sight of an ordinary chake,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I should fancy about six or seven times as big.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: It's about time we asked for a rice in screw,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: said mister Skinner to his wife Eve. If pleased, if
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: punth about the way we got those thickens on in
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the further round, please, if punts he is, he bent
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: confidentially towards her, thinketh that old food of his, he
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: said behind his hands, and made a noise of suppressed
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: laughter in his pharyngeal cavity. Mister Bensington was indeed a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: happy man that day. He was in no mood to
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: find fault with details of management. The bright dage certainly
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: brought out the accumulating slovenliess of the Skinner couple more
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: vividly than he had ever seen it before, But his
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: comments were of the gentlest. The fancy of many of
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the runs was out of order, but he seemed to
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: consider it quite satisfactory. When Missus Skinner explained that it
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: was a fox or a dog or something, he did it.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: He pointed out that the incubator had not been cleaned
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: d as in, sir, said Missus Skinner, with her arms folded,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: smiling coly behind her nose. You don't see to have
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: had the time to clean it, not since we've been here.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: He went upstairs to see some rat holes that Missus
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Skinner said would justify a trap. They certainly wore enormous,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and discovered that the room in which the food of
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the gods was mixed with meal and bran was in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: quite a disgraceful order. The skins were the sort of
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: people who find a use for cracked saucers and old cans,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and pickle jars and mustard boxes, and the place was
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: little with these. In one corner a great pile of
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: apples that Skinner had saved was decaying, and from a
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: nail and slopping part of the ceiling hung several rabbit skins,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: upon which he proposed to test his gift as a furrier.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: There isn't much about firth and things that I don't know,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: said Skinner. Mister Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: but he made no necessary fuss, And even when he
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: found a wasp regaling itself in a gallipot half full
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of Heracleophorbia four, he simply remarked mildly that his substance
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: was better sealed from the damp than exposed to the
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: air in that manner, and he turned from these things
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: at once to remark what had been for some time
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: in his mind. I think, Skinner, you know I shall
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: kill one of these chicks as a specimen. I think
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we will kill it this afternoon. I will take it
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: back to London. He pretended to peer into another gallipot,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and then took off his spectacles to wipe them. I
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: should like, he said, I should like very much to
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: have some relic, some memento of this particular brood, of
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: this particular day. By the bye, he said. You don't
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: give those little chicks meat. Oh no, Thur, said Skinner,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I can affur you, thir, we know far too much
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: about the management of valve, of all that description to
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: do anything of that thought. Quite sure, you don't throw
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: your dinner refuse, I thought, I noticed the bones of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: a rabbit scattered around the far corner of the run,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: but when they came to look at them, they found
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: that they were the larger bones of a cat, picked
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: very clean and dry. Three, that's no chick, said mister
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Bensington's cousin Jane. Well, I should think I knew a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: chick when I saw it, said mister Bensington's cousin Jane hotly.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It's too big for a chick, for one thing, And besides,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you can see perfectly well it isn't a chick. It's
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: more like a bustard than a chick. For my part,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: said Woodward, reluctantly, allowing Buzington to drag him into the argument,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I must confess that considering all the evidence. Oh if
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you do that, said mister Bensington's cousin Jane, instead of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: using your eyes like a sensible person. Well but really,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: missus Benningsen, Oh go on, said cousin Jane. You men
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: are all alike. Considering all the evidence, this certainly falls
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: within the definition. No doubt. It's abnormal and hypertrophied, but still,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: especially since it was hatched from the egg of a
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: normal hen. Yes, I think, miss Bensington, I must admit this,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: so far as one could call anything, is sort of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a chick. You mean it's a chick, said cousin Jane.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's a chick, said Wdwood. What nonsense, said
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: mister Bensington's cousin Jane, and Oh, directed at Redwood's head,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I have I'm patience with you. And then suddenly she
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: turned about and went out of the room with a slam.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And it's a very great belief to me to see
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: it too, Bensington, said Wedwood. When the reverberation of the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: slam had died away, in spite of it being so big,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: without any urgency even for mister Bensington, he sat down
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: in the low arm chair by the fire and confessed
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to Proceedings that even in a nine scientific man would
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: have been indiscreet. You will think it very rash to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: be Bessington, I know, he said, But the fact is
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I put a little, not very much of it, but
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: some into baby's bottle very nearly a week ago. But suppose,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: cried mister Bensington. I know, said Redwood, and glanced at
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the giant chick upon the plate on the table. It
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: turned out all right, thank goodness, and he felt in
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: his pocket for his cigarettes. He gave fragmentary details. Poor
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: little chap wasn't putting on weight desperately anxious. Winkles a
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: frightful duffer, former people of mine, no good missus, Redwood
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: a mitigated confidence in Winkles, you know, man with a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: manner like a cliff towering. No confidence in me, of course,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Todd Winkles scarcely allowed in the nursery. Something had to
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: be done. Slipped in while the nurse was at breakfast,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: got of the bottle. But he'll grow, said mister Bensington.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: He's growing twenty seven ounces last week. You should hear, Winkles.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: It's management, he said, dear me, that's what skinner says.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Redwood looked to the chick again. The bother is to
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: keep it up, he said. They won't trust me in
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the nursery alone because I tried to get a growth
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: curve out of Georgina phyllis, you know, and how I am.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm to give him a second dose, need you. He's
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: been crying two days. Can't get on with his ordinary
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: food again anyhow, he wants some more. Now, tell Winkles, hang, Winkles,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: said Redwood, you might get at winkles and give him
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: powders to give the child. That's about what I shall
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: have to do, said Redwood, resting his chin on his
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: fist and staring into the fire. Bensington stood for space,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: smoothing the down on the breast the giant chick. They
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: will be monstrous fowls, he said, they will, said Redwood,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: still with his eyes on the glow. Big as horses,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: said Bensington. Bigger, said Redwood, That's just it. Bensington turned
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: away from the specimen Redwood. He said, these fowls going
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: to create a sensation. Redwood nodded his head at the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: fire and by joe, said Bensington, coming round suddenly with
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: a flash of his spectacles. So will your little boy.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: That's just what I'm thinking of, said Redwood. He sat back, sighed,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: threw his unconsumed cigarette into the fire, and thrust his
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: hands deep into his trousers pockets. That's precisely what I'm
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: thinking of. The heracleophobia is going to be a queer
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: stuff to handle the past. That chick must have grown at,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: little boy, growing at that pace, said mister Bensington slowly
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and stared at the chick as he spoke, I say,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: said Bensington, he'll be big. I should give him diminishing doses,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: said Redwood. Only at any rate, winkles will. It's rather
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: too much of an experiment. Much yet still, you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I must confess some baby will sooner or later have
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: to try it all. Well, try it on some babies, certainly.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly so, said Bennington, and came and stood on the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: heart rug and took off his spectacles to wipe them.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Until I saw these chicks, Redwood, I didn't think I
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: began to realize anything of the possibilities of what we're making.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It's only beginning to dawn upon me the possible consequences.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: And even then, you know, mister Bensington was far from
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: any conception of the mind that little train would fire
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: four That happened early in June. For some weeks Bensington
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: was kept from visiting the experimental farm very severe imaginary catter,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and one necessary flying visit was made by Redwood. He
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: returned an even more anxious looking pairent than he had gone. Altogether,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: there were seven weeks of steady, uninterrupted growth, and then
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the wasps began their career. It was late in July
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and nearly a week before the hens escaped from Hickley
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Route that the first of the big wasps was killed.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: The report of it appeared in several papers, but I
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: did not know whether the redews reached mister Bensington, much
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: less whether he connected it with the general laxity of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: method that prevailed in the experimental farm. That can be
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: but little down now, that while mister Skinner was plying
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: mister Benson's chicks with Heraclopourbia four, a number of wasps
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: were just as industriously, perhaps more industriously, carrying quantities at
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the same pace, to their early summer broods in the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: sandbanks beyond the adjacent pine woods. And there can be
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: no dispute whatever that these early broods found just as
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: much growth and benefit in the substance as mister Bensington's hens.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: It is in the nature of the wasp to attain
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to effective maturity before the domestic fowl. And in fact,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of all the creatures that were, through the generous carelessness
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of the skinners partaking of the benefits mister Bezington heaped
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: upon his hens, the wasps were first to make any
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: sort of figure in the world. It was a keeper
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: named Godfrey, on the estate of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Hick,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: near Maidstone, who encountered and had the luck to kill
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the first of these monsters of whom history has any record.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: He was walking knee high in bracket across an open
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: space in the beech woods that diversified Lieutenant Colonel Hicks park,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and he was carrying his gun, very fortunately for him,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: a double barreled gun over his shoulder. When he first
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: caught sight of the thing, it was, he says, coming
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: down against the light so that he could not see
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: it very distinctly, and as it came it made a
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: drone like a motor car. He admits he was frightened.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It was evinly as big or bigger than a bar now,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and to his practiced eye, its flight, and particularly the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: misty whirl of its wings, must have seemed weirdly unbirdlike.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: The instinct of self defense I fancy mingled with long habit, when,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: as he says, he let fly right away the queerness.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: The experience probably affected his aim. At any rate, most
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of his shot missed, and the thing merely dropped for
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: a moment with an angry was that revealed the wasp
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: at once and then rose again, with all its strife
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: shining against the light. He says it turned on him
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: at any rate. He fired his second barrel at less
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: than twenty yards and threw down his gun, ran a
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: pace or so and ducked to avoid it. It flew,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: he is convinced, within a yard of him, struck the ground,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: rose again, came down again, perhaps thirty yards away, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: rolled over with its body wriggling and its stings stabbing
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: out and back in its last agony. He emptied both
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: barrels into it way again before he ventured to go near.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: When he came to measure the thing, he found it
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: was twenty seven and a half inches across its open wings,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and its sting was three inches long. The abdomen was
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: blown clean off from its body, but he estimated the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: length of the creature from head to sting as eighteen inches,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: which is very nearly correct. Its compound eyes with the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: size of penny pieces. This is the first authenticated appearance
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of these giant wasps. The day after, a cyclist riding
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: feet up down the hill between Seven Oaks and Tunbridge
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: very narrowly missed running over a second of these giants
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: that was crawling across the roadway. His passage seemed to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: alarm it, and it rose with a noise like a sawmill.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: His bicycle jumped the footpath in the emotion of the moment,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and when he could look back, the wasp was soaring
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: above the woods towards Westerham. After riding on steadily for
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: a little time, he put on his brake dismounted. He
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: was trembling so violently that he fell over his machine
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in doing so, and sat down by the roadside to recover.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: He had intended to ride to Ashford, but he did
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: not get beyond Tunbridge that day. After that, culiously enough,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: there is no record of any big wasps being seen
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: for three days. I find, on consulting the meteorological record
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: of those days that they were overcast and chilly, with
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: local showers, which may perhaps account for this intermission. Then
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: on the fourth day came blue sky and brilliant sunshine,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and such an outburst of wass as the world had
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: surely never seen before. How many big wasps came out
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that day is impossible to guess. There are at least
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: fifty accounts of their apparition. There was one victim, a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: grocer who discovered one of these monsters in a sugar
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: cask and very rashly attacked it with a spade. As
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: it rose, he struck it to the ground for a moment,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and it stung him through the boot. As he struck
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: it again and cut its body in half. He was
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: first dead of the two. The most dramatic of the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: fifty appearances was certainly that of the wasp that visited
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the British Museum about mid day, dropping out of the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: blue serene upon one of the innumerable pigeons that feed
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: in the courtyard of that building, and flying up to
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the cornice to devour its victim at leisure. After that,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: it crawled for a time over the museum roof and
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: of the dome with a reading room by a skylight,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: buzzed down inside it for some little time there was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a stampede among the readers, and at last found another
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: window and vanished again with a sudden silence from human observation.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Most of the other reports were of mere passings or descents.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: A picnic party was dispersed at Aldington Knoll and all
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: its sweets and jam consumed, and a puffy was killed
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and torn to pieces near White stable under the very
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: eyes of its mistress. The street that evening resounded with
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: a cry. The newspaper placards gave themselves up exclusively in
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the biggest of letters to the gigantic wasps in Kent.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Agitated editors and assistant editors ran up and down torturous staircases,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: bawling things about wasps. And Professor Redwood, emerging from his
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: college in Bond Street at five, flushed from a heated
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: discussion with his committee about the price of bull calves,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: bought an evening paper, opened it, changed color, forgot about
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: bull calves and committee forthwith, and took a handsome headlong
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: for Bensington's Flat five. The flat was occupied, it seemed
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to him, to the exclusion of all other sensible optat
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: by mister Skinner and his voice, if indeed you can
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: call either him or it a sensible object. The voice
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: was very high, slopping about among the notes of anguish.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: It's impossible for us to stop, sir. We've stopped on
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: hoping things would get better, and then only got worth sir.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: It isn't only the wafts death bigger ear wings, says
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: big as as there. He indicated all his hand at
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: about three inches of fat, dirty wrist. They pretty near
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: gave Missus Skinner fifth, Sir. And the thing is nested
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: by the room, sir. That they're growing, sir. And the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: canary creeper Thir? What we sewed near to think? Sir?
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It put its tendril through the window in the night, Sir,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: and very nearly caught Missus Skinner by the legs. Sir.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: It's that through the oar, sir. Whatever we've flatted about,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Sir a bit, it'll set everything growing rancor, Sir, than
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I ever thought anything could grow. It's impossible to stop
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a month, sir. It's more than our lives. The worse, Sir,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: easiness westst sing Us bose'll be suffocated by the creeper, Sir.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: You can't imagine, sir, unless you come down to see, Sir.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: He turned his superior eyes to the corners above Redwood's heads.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: How do we know the rats haven't got it? Sir?
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: That that what I think of muss Sir. I haven't
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: seen any big rats, sir, But how do I know, Sir?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: We have been threatened for days because of the ear
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: ways we've seen. Like Love said, they was two of 'em, sir,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and the fright away the canary keeper was growing, and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: directly I heard the wasps. Directly I hit him, Sir.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I understood. I didn't wait for nothing except to throw
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: on a button and floords and then I came on up.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And now, sir, I'm off well with anxiety, sir. How
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: do I know what happened in to missus Skinner? Sir?
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: There the creeper growing all over the place like a snake, sir.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Thwelp me, but you after watch it, sir, and jump
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: out of this way, and the earwig getting bigger and bigger,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and the wasps. She ain't got even a blue bag, sir.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: If anything would happen, sir. But the hen, said mister
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: ben And how the hens we've fed him up to
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: yesterday throped me, said mister Skinner. But this morning we
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: didn't dare, sir. The noise that there was with was
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: something awful, sir. They was coming on dunes. And then
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and I says, I say, if you throw up me
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: on a button, and I'm too, and I say, for
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: I go to London like this, I says, And I'll
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: go up to mister Bensington, I say, and there's a planning.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Think to Jim, and you stop in this room till
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I come back to you, I says, And keep the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: windows thut get as tight as ever you can, I says,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: if you haven't been so confoundedly untidy, began Redwood. Oh
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: don't say that, sir, said Skinner, Not now, sir, not
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: with me, so sir about missus Sinker, Sir, Oh don't, sir.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I haven't the odds to argue with you, throp me, Sir,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I haven't. It's the right. I keep thinking of how
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: do I know they haven't got missus Skinner? While I
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: have been up here and you haven't got a solitary
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: measurement of all these beautiful growth curves, said Redwood. I've
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: been too upset, sir, said mister Skinner. If you knew
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: what we've been through, me and the missus all this
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: last month, we haven't known what to make of it, Sir.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: What would the hens get in the rank and the
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: earwigs and the canary keeper. I don't know if I
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: told you, sir, the canary creeper. You've told us all that,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: said Redwood. The thing is Bensington. What are we to do?
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: What are we to do, said mister Skinner. You'll have
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to go back to missus Skinner, said Webwood. You can't
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: leave her ear layer alone all night. Let alone, sir,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I don't not if there was, but doesn't, missus Skinner.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's mister Benthington nonsense, said Wedwood. The wats will be
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: all right at night, and that weier works will get
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: out of your way. But about the rats, there aren't
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: any rats, said Wedwood. Six. Mister Skinner might have forgone
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: his chief anxiety. Missus Skinner did not stop out her day.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: About eleven, the canary creeper, which had been quietly active
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: all the morning, began to climber over the window and
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: darken it very greatly, And the darker got the more
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and more clearly. Missus Skinner perceived that her position would
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: speedily become untenable, and also that she had lived many
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: ages since Skinner went. She peered out of the darkly
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: window and through the lit stirring tendrils for some time,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: and then went very cautiously and opened the bedroom door
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and listened. Everything seemed quiet, and so, tucking her skirts
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: high about her, Missus Skinner made a bolt for the bedroom, and,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: having first looked under the bed and locked herself in.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Proceeded with the methodical rapidity of an experienced woman to
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: pack for departure. The bed had not been made, and
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the room was littered with pieces of the creeper that
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Skinner had hacked off in order to close the window
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: over night. But these disorders she did not heed. She
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: packed in a decent sheet. She packed all her own
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: wardrobe and a velveteen jacket that Skinner wore in his
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: finer moments. And she packed a jar of pickles that
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: had not been opened. And so far she was justified
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in her packing. But she also packed two of the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: hermetically closed tins contailing heracically Aphorbia four that mister Bensington
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: had brought on his last visit. She was honest, good woman,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: but she was a grandmother, and her heart had burned
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: within her to see such good growth lavished on a
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: lot of dragged chicks. And having packed all these things,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: she put on her bonnet, took off her apron, tied
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a new boot lace round her umbrella, and after listening
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: for a long time, a door and window opened the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: door and sallied out into a perilous world. The umbrella
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: was under her arm, and she clutched the bundle with
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: two gnarled and resolute hands. It was her best sunday bonnet,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and the two poppies that reared their heads amidst its
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: splendors of band and bead seemed instinct with the same
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: tremulous courage that possessed her. The features about the roots
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: of her nose wrinkled with the termination. She had enough
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: of it all, all alone there. Skinner might come back
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: there if he liked. She went out by the front door,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: going that way, not because she wanted to go to Hickleybrow,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: her goal was cheesing eyebright when her married daughter resided,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: but because the back door was impassable on account of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the canary creep without had been growing so furiously ever
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: since she upset the can of food near its roots.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: She listened for a space and closed the front door
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: very carefully behind her. At the corner of the house,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: she paused and reconnoitered. An extensively sandy scar upon the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: hillside beyond the pine woods marked the nest of the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: giant wasps, and this she studied very early. The coming
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and going of the morning was over, not a lost
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: chance to be in sight then, and except for a
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: sound scarcely more perceptible than a steam wall would saw
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: at work amidst the pines would have been, everything was
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: still as for earworks. She could see not one down
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: among the cabbage. Indeed, something was stirring, but it might
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: just as probably be a cat stalking birds. She watched
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: this for a time. She went a few paces past
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the corner, came inside of the run containing the giant checks,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and stopped again. Ah, she said, and shook her head
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: slowly at the side of them. They were at that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: time about the height of EMUs, but of course much
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: thicker in the body, a larger thing. Altogether, they were
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: all hands and five all told. Now that the two
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: cockrolls had killed each other. She hesitated at their drooping attitudes.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Poor dear, she said, and put down her bundle. They've
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: got no water, and they've had no food these twenty
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: four hours, and such appetise too as they have. She
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: put a lean finger to her lips and communed with herself.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Then this dirty old woman did what seems to me
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a quite heroic deed of mercy. She left her bundle
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: an umbrella in the middle of the brick path and
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: went to the well and drew no further fewer than
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: three pailfuls of water by the chicken's empty trough. And
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: then while they were all crowding about that she undid
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the door of the run very slowly, after which she
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: became extremely active, resumed her package, got over the hedge
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of the garden, crossed the rank meadows
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: in order to avoid the wasps nest, and toiled up
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the winding path towards Cheesing Eyebright she panted up the hill,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and as she went she paused ever and again to
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: rest her bundle and get her breath, and stare back
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: at the little cottage beside the pinewood below. And when
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: at last, when she was near the crest of the
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: hill she saw her far off three several wasps dropping
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: heavily westward. It helped her greatly on her way. She
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: soon got out of the open and in the high
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: bank lay beyond, which seemed to save a place to her,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and sew up by Hickleybrowcombe to the downs. There, at
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the foot of the downs, where a big tree gave
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: an air of shelter, she rested for her space on
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: a style, then on again, very resolutely. You figure her,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I hope, with her white bundle as sort of erect
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: black ant, hurrying along the little white path thread athwart
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the downland slopes under the hot sun of the summer afternoon.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: On she struggled after her resolute, indefatigable nose, and the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: poppies in her bonnet quivered perpetually, and her spring side
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: boots grew whiter and whiter with the downland dust flip flap,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: flip flap when her foot falls through the still heat
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of the day, and persistently incurably her umbrella sought to
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: slip from under the elbow that retained it. The mouth
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: wrinkle under her nose was first to an extreme resolution,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and ever and again she told her umbrella to come up,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: or gave her tightly clutched bundle a vindictive jerk, and
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: at times her lips mumbled with fragments of some foreseen
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: argument between herself and skinner, and far away, miles and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: miles away, a steep o on a hangar grew insensibly
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: out of the vague blue to mark more and more
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: distinctly the quiet corner where cheesing eyebright sheltered from the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: tumult of the world wrecking little or nothing of the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: heracleophobia concealed in that white bundle that struggled so persistently
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: towards its orderly retirement. Seven. So far as I can gather,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the pullets came in to Hickleybrow about three o'clock in
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the afternoon. Their coming must have been a brisk affair,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: though nobody was out in the street to see it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: The violent bellowing of the little Scherlmersdale seems to have
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: been the first announcement of anything out of the way.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Miss Durgan of the post office was at the window
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: as usual, and saw the hen that had caught the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: unhappy child in violent flight up the street, with its
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: victim closely pursued by two others. You know that swinging
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: stride of the emancipated, athletic latter day pullet. You know
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: the keen insistence of the hungry hen. There was plymouth
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: rock in these birds, I am told, And even without heraciclophobia,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that is a gaunt and striding strain. Probably Miss Durgan
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: was altogether taken by surprise. In spite of mister Bensington's
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: insistence upon secrecy. Rumors of the great chicken Missus Skinner
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: was producing had been about the village for some weeks.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Lor she cried, it's what I expected. She seems to
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: have behaved with great presence of mind. She snapped up
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the sealed bag of letters that was waiting to go
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: on to Ershall, and rushed out of the door at once.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Almost simultaneously, mister Skelmosdale himself appeared down the village, gripping
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: a watering pot by the spout and very wide in
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the face. And of course, in a moment or so
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: every one in the village was rushing to the door
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: or the window. The spectacle. Miss Durgan, all across the road,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: with the entire day's correspondence of Hickley Brow in her hand,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: gave pause to the pullet in possession of Master Skeirmosdale.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: She halted through one instant's indecision, and then turned to
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the open gates of Folker's yard. That instance was fatal.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: The second pullet ran in neatly got possession of the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: child by a well directed peck, and went over the
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: wall into the vicarage garden chalk chalk, chalk, chalk, chalk,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: cried the hindmost hen, hit smartly by the watering can
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Mister Skelmore's dale had thrown and flooded wildly over Missus
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Glue's cottage and sew into the doctor's field, while the
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: rest of those gargantuan birds pursued the pullet in possession
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: of the child across the vicarage lawn. Good heavens, cried
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the Curate, or as some say, something much more manly,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting to head
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: off the chase. Stop, you wretch, cried the Curate, as
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: though giant hands were the commonest facts in life. And then,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: finding he cannot possibly intercept her, he hurled his mallet
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: with all his might and main, and out it shot
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: in a gracious curve, within a foot or so of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Master Skelmer's tail's head, and through the glass lantern the conservatory, smash,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the new conservatory, the vicar's wife's beautiful new conservatory. It
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: frightened the hen, It might have frightened anyone. She dropped
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: her victim into a portugal laurel from which he was
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: presently extracted, disordered, but save for his less delicate garments. Uninjured,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: made a flapping leap for the roof of Volker's stables,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: put her foot through a weak place in the tiles,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and descended, so to speak, out of the infinite, into
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: the contemplated quiet of mister Bumps, the paralytic, who, it
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: is now proved beyond all Cavil did, on this one
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: occasion in his life, get down the entire length of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: his garden and indoors without any assistance whatever, bolt the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: door after him, and immediately relapsed again into Christian resignation
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: and helpless dependence upon his wife. The rest of the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: pullets were headed off by the other croquet players and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: went through the vicar's kitchen garden into the doctor's field,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: to which one Devous the fifth also came at last,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: clucking disconsolately after an unsuccessful attempt to walk on the
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: cucumber frames in mister Witherspoon's place. They seemed to have
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: stood about in a handlike manner for a time, and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: scratched a little unchirrocked meditatively, and then one pecked and
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: pecked over a high of the doctor's bees, And after
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: that they set off in a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: sort of way across the fields towards Ershot, and hickleybrow
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Street saw them no more. Near Ershot. They really came
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: upon commensurate food in a field of swedes, and pecked
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: for a space with gusto until their fame to overtook them.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: The chief immediate reaction of this astonishing irruption of gigantic
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: poultry upon the human mind was to arouse an extraordinary
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: passion to whoop and run and throw things, And in
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: quite a little time almost all the available manhood of
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Hickleybrow's and several ladies were out with a remarkable assortment
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of flappish and wangable articles in hand. To commence the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: scooting of the giant hens. They drove them into Ershot,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: where there was a rural fit and Ershot took them
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: as the crowning glory of a happy day. They began
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to be shot at near Findham Beeches, but at first
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: only with a rook rifle. Of course, birds of that
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: size could absorb an unlimited quantity of small shot without inconvenience.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: They scattered somewhere near seven Oaks and near Tunbridge. One
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of them fled, clucking for a time in excessive agitation,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: somewhat ahead of and parallel with the afternoon Boat Express,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to the great astonishment of everyone therein, and about half
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: past five two of them were caught very cleverly by
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: a circus proprietor at Tunbridge Wells, who lured them into
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: a cage rendered vagant through the death of a widowed's
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: dromedary by scattering cakes and bread. Eight. When the unfortunate
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Skinner got out of the Southeastern train at Ershot that evening,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: it was already nearly dusk. The train was late, but
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: not inordinately late, and mister Skinner remarked as much as
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: the station master. Perhaps he saw a certain pregnancy in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the station master's eye after the prievious hesitation, and with
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: a confidential movement of his hand to the side of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: his mouth, he asked if anything had happened that day?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: How'd you mean, said the station master, a man with
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: a hard emphatic voice. There respits and things we haven't
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: had much time to think of, waspitz, said the miss
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: station master agreeably. But we've been too busy with your
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: brasted ends. And he spoke the news of the pullets
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: to missus Skinner as one might break the window of
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: an adverse politician. You ain't hear of anything of missus Skinner,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: said Skinner, amidst the missile power of pithy information and
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: comet no fear, said the station master, as though even
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: he drew the line somewhere in the matter of knowledge.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I must make inquiries about fifth, said Skinner, edging out
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: of the state reach of the station master's concluding generalizations
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: about the responsibility attaching to the excessive nurture of hens.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Going through ershot, mister Skinner was held by a lime
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: burner from the pits over by Hankey, and as he
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: was looking for his hens. You ain't earned anything of
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: missus Skinner, he asked the lime burner. His exact phrases
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: need not concern us, expressed his superior interest in hands.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: It was already dark as dark at least as a
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: clear night in the English jewne can be. When Skidder,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: or his head at any rate, came into the bar
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: of the Jolly Drovers and said, Hello, you haven't heard
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: anything of this uh story about my ends? Have you? Oh?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Haven't we said mister Fulker, Why part of the story's
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: been and bust into my stable roof, and one chapter
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: smasher old In Missus Vicker's green ouse, I beg a
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: pardon conservatory. Skinner came in. I'd liked something a little comforting.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: He said, oh, Din and water about my finger, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: everybody began to tell him things about the bullets. Grace
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: has me, said Skinner. You haven't heard anything about missus Skinner,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: have you? He asked in a pause, that we haven't,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: said mister Witherspoon. We haven't thought of a We ain't
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: thought nothing of either of you. Ain't you been home today?
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Said Fulker over tankard. If one of those brasted birds
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: of pect began mister Witherspoon's and left the full horror
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: of their unaieded imaginations, it appeared to the meeting at
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the time that it would be an instring end to
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: an eventful day to go on with Skinner and see
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: if anything had happened to missus Skinner. One never knows
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: what luck one may have when accidents are at large.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: But Skinner standing at the bar and drinking his hot
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: gin and water with one eye roving over the things
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: at the back of the bar, and the other fix
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: on the absolute missed the psychological moment. I suppose there
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: haven't been any trouble with any of the big waspits
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: to day anywhere, he asked, with an elaborate detachment of manner.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Being too busy with your ends, said Foulka. I suppose
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: they've all gone in now, anyhow, said Skinner, What the ends?
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: I was thinking of the waste more particularly, said Skinner,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And then, with an air of circumspection that would have
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: awakened suspicion and a weak old baby in laying the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: accent heavily on most of the words he chose, he asked,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: I suppose nobody hasn't aed of any other big things about?
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Have they big dogs? Or cat or anything? Of that? Thought?
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Seemed to me that a big ends and big wa
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: is coming on. He laughed, with a frying pretense of
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: talking idly, but a brooding expression came upon the faces
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: of the Hickley brow men. Fulka was the first to
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: give their condensing throat the concrete shape of words. A
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: cat to match them ends, said Fulka, Aye said witherspoon.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: A catch to match they ends? Twould be a tiger,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: said Fulka. Morn A tiger said Witherspoon, when at last
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swelling field that
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: separated Hickley Brow from the somber pine shaded hollow, in
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: whose black shadows the gigantic canary creeper grappled silently with
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: experimental form. He followed it alone. He was distinctly seen
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: to rise against the sky line, against the warm, clear
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: immensity of the northern sky. For so far public interests
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: followed him, and to descend again into the night, into
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: an obscurity from which it would seem he would never
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: more emerge. He passed into a mystery. No one knows
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: to this day what happened to him him after he
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: crossed the brow. When later on the two Folkas and Witherspoon,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: moved by their old imaginations, came up the hill instead
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: after him. The flight had swallowed him altogether. The three
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: men stood close. There was not a sound out of
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the wood, blackness that hid for the farm from their eyes.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: It's all right, said young Fulker, ending a silence. Don't
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: see any lights, said Witherspoon. You wouldn't from here. It's misty,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: said the elder Falker. They meditated for his face ed
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: have come back if anything was wrong, said young Falker,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And this sceneed so obvious and conclusive that presently old
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: folks said, well, and the three white home to bed. Thoughtfully,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I will admit a ship at out by Hucksta's farm
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: heard her squealing in the night that he thought was foxes,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and in the morning one of his lambs had been killed,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: dragged half way towards Hickleybrow, and partially devoured. The inexplicable
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: part of it all is the absence of any disputable
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: remains of Skinner. Many weeks after, amidst the charred ruins
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and the experimental farm, there was found something which may
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: or may not have been a human shoulder blade, And
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: in another part of the ruins long bone greatly gnawed
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and equally doubtful. Near the style going up towards ebright
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Tho has found a glass eye. And many people discovered
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: thereupon that Skinner owed much of his personal charm to
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: such a possession. It stared out upon the world with
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: that same inevitable effect of attachment, that same severe melancholy
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: that had been the redemption of his else's worldly countenance.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: And about the ruins, industrious research discovered the metal rings
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: and charred coverings of two linen buttons, three shank buttons entire,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: and one of that metallic sort which is used in
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: the less conspicuous futures of the human economy. Theory's remains
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: have been accepted by persons in authority as conclusive of
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: a destroyed and scattered Skinner. But from my own entire conviction,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and in view of his distinctive idiosyncrasy, I must confess
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I should prefer few buttons and more bones. The glass eye,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: of course, has an air of extreme conviction. But if
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: it really is Skinner's, and even missus Skinner did not
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: certainly know if that immobile eye of his was glass,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: something has changed, for from a wiquid brown to a serene
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: and confident blue. That shoulder blade is an extremely doubtful document,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: and I would like to put it side by side
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: with the nod scapulae of a few of the commoner
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: domestic animals before I admitted its humanity. And where were
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Skinner's boots, for example? Perverted? As strange as a rat's
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: appetite might be, is it conceivable that the same creatures
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that could leave a lamb only half eaten with finish
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: up skinner hair, bones, teeth and boots. I have closely
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: questioned as many as I could of those who knew
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Skinner at all intimately, and they one and all agreed
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that they could not imagine anything eating him. He was
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the sort of man. As a retired seafaring person living
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in one of mister W. W. Jacob's cottages at Dunton
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Green told me, with the guarded significance of manner not
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: uncommon in those parts, who would get washed up anyhow,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: And as regards the devouring element was fit to put
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: a fire out, he considered that Skinner would be as
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: safe on a raft as anywhere. The retired seafaring man
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: added that he wished to say nothing whatever against Skinner.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Facts were facts, and rather than have his clothes made
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: by Skinner, the retired seafaring man remarked he would take
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: his chance of being locked up. These observations certainly do
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: not present Skinner in the light of an hypaphetizing object.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: To be perfectly frank with the reader, I do not
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: believe he ever went back to the experimental farm. I
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: believe he hovered through long hesitations about the fields of
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the Hickleybrow glabe, and finally, when that squealing began, took
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: the line of least residence out of his perplexities into
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the incognito, and in the incognito, whether of this or
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: some other world unknown to us, he obstinately and quite
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: indisputably has remained to this day. End of book one,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Chapter two of The Food of the Gods and How
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: It Came to Earth. Recording by Alexeta Lander Davis, California,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: www dot alextelander dot com.