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41 - Centaur by Algernon Blackwood · Centaur

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  Speaker 1: Chapter forty one of The Centaur by alginon Blackwood. This
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Yoganan
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  Speaker 1: The Centaur, Chapter forty one, summer blazed everywhere, and the
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  Speaker 1: sea lay like a blue pool of melted sky and sunshine.
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  Speaker 1: The summits of the Caucasus soon faded to the east
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  Speaker 1: and north, and to the south. The wooded hills of
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  Speaker 1: the Black Sea coast accompany the ship in a line
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  Speaker 1: of wavy blue that joined the water in the sky indistinguishably.
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  Speaker 1: The first class passengers were few. O'Malley hardly noticed their existence.
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  Speaker 1: Even an American engineer building a railway in Turkey came
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  Speaker 1: on board. At Trebizond, there were one or two light
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  Speaker 1: women on their way home from Baku, and the attache
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  Speaker 1: of a foreign embassy from Taharan. But the Irishman felt
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  Speaker 1: more in touch with the hundred peasant folk who joined
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  Speaker 1: the ship at Aniboli from the interior of Asia Minor
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  Speaker 1: and were bound as third class emigrants from Marsailles and
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  Speaker 1: Far America. Dark skinned, wild eyed, ragged, very dirty, they
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  Speaker 1: had never seen the sea before, and the sight of
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  Speaker 1: a purpoise held them spellbound. They lived on the after deck,
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  Speaker 1: mostly cooking their own food. The women and children sleeping
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  Speaker 1: beneath the last top hall, in that the sailors stretched
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  Speaker 1: for them across the width of deck. At night, they
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  Speaker 1: play the pipes and danced, singing, shouting, and waving their arms,
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  Speaker 1: almost the same tune, over and over again. O'Malley watched
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  Speaker 1: them for hours together. He also watched the engineer, the
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  Speaker 1: overdressed women, the attache. He understood the difference between them
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  Speaker 1: as he had never understood it before. He understood the
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  Speaker 1: difficulty of his task as well. How in the world
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  Speaker 1: could he ever explain a single syllable of his message
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  Speaker 1: to this latter, or awaken in them the faintest eck
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  Speaker 1: of decid and know and listen. The peasants, though all
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  Speaker 1: unconscious of the blinding glory of the elbows, stood far
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  Speaker 1: nearer to the truth. Being further east as it pissed.
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  Speaker 1: The engineer observed one afternoon, as a steamer lay of Brosa,
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  Speaker 1: taking on a little extra cargo of walnut logs, he
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  Speaker 1: looked admiringly at the irishman's bronzed skin. Take a better
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  Speaker 1: send than this to put that on, He laughed in
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  Speaker 1: his breezy, vigorous way, and the other laughed with him.
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  Speaker 1: Previous conversations had already paved the way to a traveler's friendship,
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  Speaker 1: and the American had taken to him. Up in the mountains,
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  Speaker 1: he replied, camping out and sleeping in the sun, did
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  Speaker 1: it the Caucasus. Ah. I'd like to get up there
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  Speaker 1: myself a bit, I'm told the wonderful thing in the
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  Speaker 1: mountain lion scenery for him, was evidently a commercial commodity,
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  Speaker 1: or it was nothing. It was the most up to
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  Speaker 1: date nation in the world that spoke in the van
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  Speaker 1: of civilization, representing the last word in progress due to
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  Speaker 1: triumph over nature. O' mallie said he had never seen
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  Speaker 1: anything like them. He described the trees, the flowers, the tribes,
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  Speaker 1: the scenery in general. He dwelt upon the vast, uncultivated spaces,
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  Speaker 1: the amazing fruitfulness of the soil, the gorgeous beauty above all.
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  Speaker 1: I'd like to get the over crowded cities of England
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  Speaker 1: and Europe spread all over it, he said, with enthusiasm.
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  Speaker 1: There's room for thousands there to lead a simple life,
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  Speaker 1: close to nature, in health and peace and happiness. Even
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  Speaker 1: your tired millionis could escape their restless, feverish worries, laid
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  Speaker 1: on their very burden of possessions, and enjoy the earth.
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  Speaker 1: At last, the poor would cease to be with us.
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  Speaker 1: Life become true and beautiful again. He let it pour
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  Speaker 1: out of him, building the scaffolding of his stream before
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  Speaker 1: him in the air, and filling it in with beauty.
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  Speaker 1: The American listened in patience, watching the walnut logs being
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  Speaker 1: towed through water to the side of the ship. From
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  Speaker 1: time to time he spat on them or into the sea.
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  Speaker 1: He let the beauty go completely past him. Great idea
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  Speaker 1: that he interrupted at length. You are interested, I see
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  Speaker 1: in socialism and communistic schemes. There's money in them somewhere,
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  Speaker 1: right enough, if a man could hit the right note
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  Speaker 1: at the first go off, take a bit of doing there.
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  Speaker 1: One of the women from Baku came up and leaned
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  Speaker 1: upon the rails a little beyond them, the sickly order
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  Speaker 1: of artificials, said, and wafted down the attaches strolled along
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  Speaker 1: the deck and oglda get a few of that sort
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  Speaker 1: to draw the millionaires in, eh, he added, vulgarly, even
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  Speaker 1: those would come, Yes, said the irishman softly, realizing for
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  Speaker 1: the first time within his memory that his gorge did
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  Speaker 1: not rise, for they too would change, grow clean and
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  Speaker 1: sweet and beautiful. The engineer looked sharply into his face,
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  Speaker 1: uncertain whether he had not missed a clever witticism of
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  Speaker 1: his own kind. But O'Malley did not meet his glance.
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  Speaker 1: His eyes were far away upon the snowy summit of Olympus,
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  Speaker 1: where a flock of fleezy clothes hung, hovering like the
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  Speaker 1: hair of the eternal gods. They say this timber going
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  Speaker 1: to waste, that he could get to the coast merely
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  Speaker 1: for the cost of drawing it. Caucasian walnut too to burn,
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  Speaker 1: The other continued, getting on to safer ground, and labour's
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  Speaker 1: dirt cheap. There's every sort of mineral to God ever made.
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  Speaker 1: You could build light railways and run the show by
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  Speaker 1: electricity and water power. For the asking. You'd have to
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  Speaker 1: yet a concession from Russian first, though, he added, spitting
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  Speaker 1: down upon a huge floating log in the clear sea underneath.
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  Speaker 1: And Russia's got palms that want a lot of freezing.
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  Speaker 1: I guess the natives too would take a bit of managing.
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  Speaker 1: The woman beyond had shifted several feet nearer, and after
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  Speaker 1: a pause, the Irishman found no words to fill. His
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  Speaker 1: companion turned to address to remark her, O'Malley took the
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  Speaker 1: opening and moved away. Here's my card anyway, the American added,
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  Speaker 1: handing him an overprinted bit of large pasteboat from a
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  Speaker 1: fat pocket book that booris name and address in silver
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  Speaker 1: on the outside. If you developed the scheme and want
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  Speaker 1: a bit of money, count me in. He went to
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  Speaker 1: the other side of the vessel and watched the peasants
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  Speaker 1: on the lower deck. Their dirt seem nothing but comparison.
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  Speaker 1: It was only on their clothes and bodies. The odor
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  Speaker 1: of this unwashed humanity was almost sweet and wholesome. It
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  Speaker 1: cleansed the sickly taint of that other sent from his palate.
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  Speaker 1: It washed his mind of thoughts as well. He stood
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  Speaker 1: there long and dreaming silence, where the sunlight and olympus
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  Speaker 1: turned from gold to rose, and the sea took on
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  Speaker 1: the colors of the fading sky. He watched a dark
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  Speaker 1: curd baby sliding down the top allen. A kitten was
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  Speaker 1: playing with a loose end of rope, too heavy for
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  Speaker 1: it to move further off. A huge fellow with bad
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  Speaker 1: chest and the hands of a colossus sat on a
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  Speaker 1: pile of canvas, playing softly on his wooden pipes. The
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  Speaker 1: dark hair fell across his eyes, and a group of
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  Speaker 1: women listened idly while they busied themselves with the cooking
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  Speaker 1: of the evening meal. Immediately beneath him, a splendid eyed
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  Speaker 1: woman crammed a baby to her naked breast. The kitten
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  Speaker 1: left the rope and played with the tassel of a
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  Speaker 1: scarlet shawl. And as he heard those pipes and watched
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  Speaker 1: the grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant men
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  Speaker 1: and women, he understood that low though they might be
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  Speaker 1: in the scale of evolution, there was yet absent from
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  Speaker 1: them the touch of the deteriorating something which civilization painted
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  Speaker 1: into those other countenances. But whether the word he sought
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  Speaker 1: was degradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell.
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  Speaker 1: In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity
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  Speaker 1: and independence, there was this something, he felt that bordered
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  Speaker 1: on being impressive. Their wants were few, their worthy possessions
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  Speaker 1: in a bundle, Yet they had this thing that set
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  Speaker 1: them in a place apart, if not about these others.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond that simpering attache for all his worthy diplomacy, that
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  Speaker 1: engineer with brains and skill, those painted women with clever
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  Speaker 1: playing upon the feelings and desires of their kind. There
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  Speaker 1: was this difference, that said, the ragged, dirty crew, in
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  Speaker 1: a proud and quiet atmosphere that made them seem almost
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  Speaker 1: distinguished by comparison, and chatly more desirable. Rough and untutored
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  Speaker 1: though they doubtless were, they still possessed unspoiled, and deeper
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  Speaker 1: and more elemental nature that bound them closer to the earth.
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  Speaker 1: It needed training, guidance, purifying, yes, But in the last resort,
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  Speaker 1: was it not of greater spiritual significance and value than
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  Speaker 1: the mode of comparatively recently developed reason by which civilization
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  Speaker 1: had produced these other types. He watched them long. The
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  Speaker 1: sun sank out of sight, the sea turned dark, ten
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  Speaker 1: thousand stars shone softly in the sky, And while the
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  Speaker 1: steamer swung about and made for peaked and rose in
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  Speaker 1: the coast of Greece, he still stood on in reverie
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  Speaker 1: and wonder. The wings of his great dream stirred mightily,
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  Speaker 1: and he saw pale millions of men and women trooping
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  Speaker 1: through the gates of horn and ivory into that garden,
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  Speaker 1: where they should find peace and happiness and clean simplicity,
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  Speaker 1: close to the earth. The end of chapter forty one