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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 1 Chapter 5 - The Minimificence of Mr. Bensington · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter five of The Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Alexetlander, Davis, California. The Food of the Gods and
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  Speaker 1: How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells, Book one,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter five, The Manificence of Mister Bensington one. It was
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  Speaker 1: while the Royal Commission on Boom Food was preparing its
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  Speaker 1: report that heracicllyophurior really began to demonstrate its capacity for leakage,
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  Speaker 1: and the earliness of the second outbreak was the more
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  Speaker 1: unfortunate from the point of view of Cosser. At any rate,
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  Speaker 1: since the draft report still in existence, shows that the
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  Speaker 1: Commission had, under the tutelage of that most able member,
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Stephen Winkles f R, S M D, f R
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  Speaker 1: C P D S C J P D, L, et cetera,
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  Speaker 1: already quite made up its mind that accidental leakages were impossible,
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  Speaker 1: and was prepared to recommend to entrust the preparation of
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  Speaker 1: boomfood to a qualified committee. Winkles chiefly with an entire
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  Speaker 1: control over its sale, was quite enough to satisfy all
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  Speaker 1: reasonable objections to its free diffusion. This committee was to
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  Speaker 1: have an absolute monopoly. And it is no doubt to
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  Speaker 1: be considered as a part of the irony of life,
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  Speaker 1: that the first and most alarming of this second series
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  Speaker 1: of leakages occurred within fifty yards of a little cottage
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  Speaker 1: at Keston, occupied during the summer months by doctor Winkles.
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  Speaker 1: There can be little doubt now that Redwood's refusal to
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  Speaker 1: acquaint Winkles with the composition of Heraclophobia four had aroused
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  Speaker 1: in that gentleman a novel and intense desire towards analytical chemistry.
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  Speaker 1: He was not a very expert manipulator, and for that
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  Speaker 1: reason probably he saw fit to do his work not
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  Speaker 1: in the excellently equipped laboratories that were at his disposal
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  Speaker 1: in London, but without consulting anyone, and almost with an
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  Speaker 1: air of secrecy, in a rough, little garden laboratory at
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  Speaker 1: the Keston establishment. He does not seem to have shown
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  Speaker 1: either very great energy or very great ability in this quest. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: one gathers he dropped the inquiry after working at it
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  Speaker 1: intermittently for about a month. Thus, the garden laboratory in
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  Speaker 1: which the work was done was very roughly equipped, supplied
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  Speaker 1: by a stand pipe's tapped with water and draining into
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  Speaker 1: a pipe that ran down into a swampy rush boarded
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  Speaker 1: pool under an alder tree in a secluded corner of
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  Speaker 1: the common, just outside the garden hedge. The pipe was
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  Speaker 1: cracked and the residuum of the food of the gods
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  Speaker 1: escaped through the crack into a little puddle amidst clumps
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  Speaker 1: of rushes, just in time for the spring awakening. Everything
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  Speaker 1: was astir withid life. In that scummy little corner. There
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  Speaker 1: was frog spown adrift, tremulous with tadpoles just bursting their
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  Speaker 1: gelatinous envelopes. There were little pond snails creeping out into life,
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  Speaker 1: and under the green skin of the rush stems, the
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  Speaker 1: larvae of a big water beetle were struggling out of
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  Speaker 1: their egg cases. I doubt if the rita knows the
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  Speaker 1: larvae of the beetle called I know not why dietiscus.
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  Speaker 1: It is a jointed, queer looking thing, very musculine, sudden
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  Speaker 1: in its movements, and given to swimming head downward with
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  Speaker 1: its tail out of the water the length of a
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  Speaker 1: man's top thumb joint. It is and more two inches,
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  Speaker 1: that is for those who have not eaten the food.
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  Speaker 1: And it has two sharp jaws that meet in the
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  Speaker 1: front of its head, tubulid jaws with sharp points, to
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  Speaker 1: which its habit is to suck its victim's blood. The
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  Speaker 1: first things to get at the drifting grains of the
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  Speaker 1: food with the little tadpoles and the little water snails,
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  Speaker 1: the little wriggling tadpoles in particular, once they had the
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  Speaker 1: taste of it, took to it with zest. But scarcely
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  Speaker 1: did one of them begin to grow into a conspicuous
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  Speaker 1: position in that little tadpole world, and try a smaller brother,
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  Speaker 1: or so as an aid to a vegetarian dietary. When Nip,
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  Speaker 1: one of the beadle lover, had its curved blood sucking
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  Speaker 1: prongs gripping into his heart, and with that red stream
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  Speaker 1: went heracically a fourbia four, in a state of solution,
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  Speaker 1: into the being of a new client. The only thing
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  Speaker 1: that had a chance with these monsters to get any
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  Speaker 1: share of the food. With the rushes and slimy green
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  Speaker 1: scum in the water, and the seedling weeds in the
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  Speaker 1: mud of the bottom. A clean up of the study
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  Speaker 1: presently washed a fresh spate of the food into the puddle,
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  Speaker 1: and overfloated and carried all the sinister expansion of the
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  Speaker 1: struggleful life into the adjacent pool under the roots of
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  Speaker 1: the alder. The first person to discover what was going
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  Speaker 1: on was of mister Lucy Carrington, a special science teacher
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  Speaker 1: under the London Education Board, and in his leisure a
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  Speaker 1: specialist in fresh water algae, and he certainly not to
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  Speaker 1: be envied his discovery. He had come down to Keston
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  Speaker 1: Common for the day to fellow's number of specimen tubes
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  Speaker 1: for subsequent examination, and he came with a dozen or
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  Speaker 1: so of court tubes, clanking faintly in his pocket over
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  Speaker 1: the sandy cress and down towards the pool, spiked walking
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  Speaker 1: stick in hand. A garden lad standing on the top
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  Speaker 1: of the kitchen steps clipping doctor Wrinkle's hedge saw him
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  Speaker 1: in his unfrigated corner, and found him in his occupation
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  Speaker 1: sufficiently inexplicable and interesting to watch him. Pretty closely, he
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  Speaker 1: saw mister Carrington stoop down by the side of the
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  Speaker 1: pool with his hand against the old alder stem, and
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  Speaker 1: peer into the water, But of course he could not
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  Speaker 1: appreciate the surpride and pleasure with which mister Carrington beheld
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  Speaker 1: a big, unfamiliar looking blobs and threads of the augl
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  Speaker 1: gum at the bottom. There were no tadpoles visible. They
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  Speaker 1: had all been killed by that time, and it would
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  Speaker 1: see mister Carrington saw nothing at all unusual except the
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  Speaker 1: excessive vegetation. He he bared his arm to the elbow,
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  Speaker 1: leant forward, and dipped deep in pursuit of the specimen.
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  Speaker 1: His seeking hand went down instantly. There flashed out of
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  Speaker 1: the cool shadow under the tree roots, something flash. It
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  Speaker 1: buried its fangs deep into his arm. A bizarre shape.
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  Speaker 1: It was a foot long or more, brown and jointed
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  Speaker 1: like a scorpion. Its ugly apparition and the sharp, amazing
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  Speaker 1: painfulness of its spite were too much for mister Carrington's equilibrium.
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  Speaker 1: He felt himself going and yelled aloud over. He toppled
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  Speaker 1: face forwards, splash into the pool. The boy saw him
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  Speaker 1: vanish and heard the splashing of his struggle in the water.
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  Speaker 1: The unfortunate man emerged again into the Boyd's field of vision,
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  Speaker 1: hatless and streaming with water and screaming. Never before had
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  Speaker 1: the boy heard screams from a man. This astonishing stranger
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  Speaker 1: appeared to be tearing at something. On the side of
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  Speaker 1: his face. There appeared streaks of blood there. He flung
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  Speaker 1: out his arms as if in despair, leaped in the
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  Speaker 1: air like a frantic creature, ran violently twelve ten or
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  Speaker 1: twelve yards, and then fell and rolled on the ground
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  Speaker 1: on over and out of sight of the boy. The
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  Speaker 1: lad was down the steps and threw the hedge in
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  Speaker 1: a trice, happily with a garden shears still in hand.
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  Speaker 1: As he came crashing through the gorse bushes. He says
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  Speaker 1: he was half minded to turn back, fearing he had
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  Speaker 1: to deal with the lunatic, but the possession of his
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  Speaker 1: shears reassured him. I could have jermped out his eyes,
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  Speaker 1: he explained. Anyhow, directly mister Carrington caught sight of him,
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  Speaker 1: his demeanor became at once that of the same but
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  Speaker 1: desperate man. He struggled to his feet, stumbled, stood up,
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  Speaker 1: and came to meet the boy. Look, he cried, I
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  Speaker 1: can't get him off, And with a qualm of corror,
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  Speaker 1: the boy saw that attached to mister Carton's cheek to
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  Speaker 1: his bare arm and to his thigh, and lashing furiocely
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  Speaker 1: with their eyes, brown muscular bodies, with three of these
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  Speaker 1: horrible larvae, their great jaws buried deep in his flesh
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  Speaker 1: and sucking for dear life the other grip of bulldogs.
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  Speaker 1: And mister Carrington's efforts to detach the monsters from his
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  Speaker 1: face had only served to lacerate the flesh to which
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  Speaker 1: it had attached itself, and streaked face and neck and
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  Speaker 1: coat with living scarlet. Oh cut him, cried the boy,
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  Speaker 1: hold on, sir, and with the zest of his age
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  Speaker 1: and such proceedings, he severed one by one the heads
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  Speaker 1: from the bodies of mister Carrington's as salts yep, he
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  Speaker 1: said the boy, with a wincing face, as each one
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  Speaker 1: fold before him. Even then, so tough and determined was
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  Speaker 1: their grip, that the severed heads remained for space, still
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  Speaker 1: fiercely biting home and still sucking, with the blood streaming
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  Speaker 1: out of their necks behind. But the boy stopped that
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  Speaker 1: with a few more slashes of his scissors, at one
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  Speaker 1: of which mister Carrington was implicated. I couldn't get him off,
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  Speaker 1: repeated Carrington, and stood for a space swaying and bleeding profusely.
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  Speaker 1: He dabbed feeble hands at his injuries and examined the
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  Speaker 1: result upon his palms. Then he gave way at the
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  Speaker 1: knees and fell headlong, and a dead faint at the
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  Speaker 1: boy's feet, between the still leaping bodies of his defeated foes.
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  Speaker 1: Very luckily it didn't occur to the boy to splash
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  Speaker 1: water on his face, for there was still more of
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  Speaker 1: these horrors under the older roots, and instead he passed
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  Speaker 1: back by the pond and went into the garden with
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  Speaker 1: the intention of calling assistants, And there he met the
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  Speaker 1: gardener coachman and told him of the whole affair. When
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  Speaker 1: they got back to mister Carrington, he was sitting up,
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  Speaker 1: dazed and weak, but able to warn them against the
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  Speaker 1: danger in the pool. Two such were the circumstances by
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  Speaker 1: which the world had its first notification that the food
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  Speaker 1: was loose again. In another week, Keston Common was in
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  Speaker 1: full operation as what NAT was called a center of distribution.
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  Speaker 1: This time there were no wasps or rats, no ear rings,
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  Speaker 1: and no nettles, but there were at least three water spiders,
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  Speaker 1: seven dragonfly larvae which presently became dragonflies, dazzling all Kent
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  Speaker 1: with their hovering sapphire bodies, and a nasty, gelatinous, scummy
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  Speaker 1: growth that swelled over the pond margin and sent its
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  Speaker 1: slimy green masses surging halfway up the garden path to
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  Speaker 1: doctor Winkle's house. And there began a growth of brushes,
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  Speaker 1: an acquisetum and potamaugeton that ended only with the drying
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  Speaker 1: of the pond. It speedily became evident to the public
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  Speaker 1: mind that this time there was not simply one center
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  Speaker 1: of distribution, but quite a number of centers. There was
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  Speaker 1: one at Ealing, there can be no doubt now, and
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  Speaker 1: from that came the plague of flies in red Spider.
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  Speaker 1: There was one at Sunbury, productive of ferocious great eels
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  Speaker 1: that could come ashore and kill sheep. And there was
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  Speaker 1: one in Bloomsbury that gave the world a new strain
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  Speaker 1: of cockroaches of quite a terrible sort, an old house
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  Speaker 1: that was in Bloomsbury and much inhabited by undesirable things.
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  Speaker 1: Abruptly the world found itself confronted with the Hickley Rock
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  Speaker 1: experiences all over again, with all sorts of queer exaggerations
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  Speaker 1: of familiar monsters in the place of the giant hands
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  Speaker 1: and rats and wasps, Each sentate burst out with its
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  Speaker 1: own characteristic local fauna and flora. We know now that
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  Speaker 1: every one of these centers corresponded to one of the
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  Speaker 1: patients of doctor Winkles, but that was by no means
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  Speaker 1: apparent at the time. Doctor Winkles was the last person
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  Speaker 1: to occur any odium in the matter. There was a panic,
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  Speaker 1: quite naturally, a passionate indignation, but it was indignation not
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  Speaker 1: against doctor Wingles, but against the food, and not so
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  Speaker 1: much against the food as against the unfortunate Bensington, whom
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  Speaker 1: from the very first the popular imagination that insisted upon
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  Speaker 1: regarding as the sole and only purposon responsible for this
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  Speaker 1: new thing. The attempt to lynch him that followed is
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  Speaker 1: just one of those explosive events that bulk largely in
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  Speaker 1: history on our In reality, the least significant of occurrences
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  Speaker 1: the history. The outbreak is a mystery. The nucleus of
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  Speaker 1: the crowd certainly came from an anti bomb food meeting
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  Speaker 1: in Hyde Park organized by the extremeness of the Catahams
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  Speaker 1: of Party, but there seemed no one in the world
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  Speaker 1: who actually first proposed, No one who ever first tinted
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  Speaker 1: a suggestion of the outrage at which so many people assisted.
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  Speaker 1: It is a problem that m Gustave Lebaun a mystery
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  Speaker 1: in the Psychology of Crowds. The fact emerges that at
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  Speaker 1: about three o'clock on Sunday afternoon, a remarkably big and
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  Speaker 1: ugly London crowd, entirely out of hand, came rolling down
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  Speaker 1: Thursday Street, intend on Bensington's exemplary death as a warning
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  Speaker 1: to all scientific investigators, and that it came nearer accomplishing
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  Speaker 1: his object than any London crowd has ever come since
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  Speaker 1: the Hyde Park railings came down in remote Vinyl Victorian times.
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  Speaker 1: This crowd came so close to its object, indeed, that
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  Speaker 1: for the space of an hour or more a word
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  Speaker 1: would have settled the unfortunate gentleman's fate. The verse intimation
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  Speaker 1: he had of the thing was the noise of the
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  Speaker 1: people outside. He went to the window, appeared, realizing nothing
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  Speaker 1: of what impended. For a minute, perhaps he watched them
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  Speaker 1: seating about the entrance, disposing of an ineffectual dozen of
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  Speaker 1: policemen who barred their way. Before he fully realized his
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  Speaker 1: own importance in the affair, it came upon him in
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  Speaker 1: a flash, and that that roaring, swaying multitude was after him.
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  Speaker 1: He was all alone in a flat, fortunately perhaps his
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  Speaker 1: cousin Jane, having gone down to Ealing to have tea
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  Speaker 1: with a relation on her mother's side, and he had
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  Speaker 1: no more idea of how to behave under such circumstances
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  Speaker 1: than he had of the etiquette of the day of judgment.
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  Speaker 1: He was still dashing about the flat, asking his furniture
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  Speaker 1: what he should do, turning keys and locks and then
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  Speaker 1: unlocking them again, making darts a door and window and bedroom,
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  Speaker 1: when the floor clerk came to him. There isn't a moment, sir,
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  Speaker 1: he said, They've got your number from the board in
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  Speaker 1: the hall. They're coming straight up. He ran mister Bensdon
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  Speaker 1: out into the passage, already echoing with the approaching tumult
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  Speaker 1: from the great staircase, locked the door behind them, and
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  Speaker 1: led the way into the opposite flat by means of
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  Speaker 1: his duplicate key. It's our only chance now, he said.
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  Speaker 1: He flung up a window which opened on a ventilating shaft,
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  Speaker 1: and showed that the wall was set with iron staples
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  Speaker 1: that made the rudest and most perilous of wall ladders
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  Speaker 1: to serve as a fire escape from the upper flats.
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  Speaker 1: He shoved mister Bensington out the window, showed him how
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  Speaker 1: to cling on, and pursued him up the ladder, goating
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  Speaker 1: and jabbing his legs with a bunch of keys whenever
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  Speaker 1: he desisted from climbing. It seemed to Bensington at times
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  Speaker 1: that he must climb that vertical ladder for evermore. Above
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  Speaker 1: the parapet was inaccessibly remote, a mile perhaps below. He
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  Speaker 1: did not care to think of things below. Steady on,
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  Speaker 1: cried the clerk and gripped his ankle. It was quite
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  Speaker 1: horrible having his ankle gripped like that, and missed Bensington
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  Speaker 1: tidening his hold on the iron staple above to a
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  Speaker 1: drowning clutch, and gave a faint squeal of terror. It
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  Speaker 1: became evident the clerk had broken a window, and then
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  Speaker 1: it seemed he had leaped a vast distant sideways. And
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  Speaker 1: there came the voice of the window frame, sliding in
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  Speaker 1: its sash. He was bawling things. Mister Benzetton moved his
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  Speaker 1: head round cautiously until he could see the clerk come
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  Speaker 1: down six steps. The clerk commanded all this moving about
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  Speaker 1: seemed very foolish, but very very cautiously. Mister Bennetton lowered
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  Speaker 1: a foot. Don't pull me, he cried, as the clerk
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  Speaker 1: made to help him from the open window. It seemed
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  Speaker 1: to him that to reach the window from the ladder
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  Speaker 1: would be a very respectable feat for a flying fox,
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  Speaker 1: and it was rather with the idea of a decent
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  Speaker 1: suicide than in any hope of accomplishing it, that he
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  Speaker 1: made there a step at last, and quite ruthlessly, the
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  Speaker 1: clerk pulled him in. You'll have to stop here, said
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  Speaker 1: the clerk. My keys are no good here. It's an
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  Speaker 1: American lock. I'll go out and slam the door behind
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  Speaker 1: me and see if I can find the man of
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  Speaker 1: this floor. You'll be locked in. Don't go to the window,
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  Speaker 1: that's all. It's the ugliest crowd I've ever seen. If
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  Speaker 1: only they think you're all out, they'll probably content themselves
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  Speaker 1: by breaking up your stuff. The indicator set in, said Bensington.
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  Speaker 1: The devil it did well, anyhow, I'd better not be found.
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  Speaker 1: He vanished with a slab of the door. Bensington was
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: left to his own initiative again. It took him under
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  Speaker 1: the bed. There presently he was found by Cosser. Bensington
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  Speaker 1: was almost comotosed with terror when he was found, for
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  Speaker 1: Cossar had burst the door in with his shoulder by
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  Speaker 1: jumping out it across the breadth of the passage. Come
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  Speaker 1: out of it, Bensington, he said, it's all right, it's me.
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  Speaker 1: We've got to get out of this. They're setting the
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  Speaker 1: plates on fire. The porteress are all cleaning out, the
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  Speaker 1: servants are gone. It's likely I caught the man who knew.
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  Speaker 1: Look here, Besiden, peering from under the bed, became aware
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  Speaker 1: of some unaccountable garments on Cosser's arm, and of all things,
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  Speaker 1: a black bonnet in his hand. They're having it clear out,
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  Speaker 1: said Cosser. If they don't set the place on fire,
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  Speaker 1: they'll come here. Troops may not be here for now
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  Speaker 1: yet fifty percent. We look into the crowd, and the
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  Speaker 1: most furnished flats they go into, the better they'll like it.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be they mean it. Clear out. You put this
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  Speaker 1: skirt and bonnet on, Bezyden, and clear out with me.
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  Speaker 1: Do you mean, began Benzyton, protruding a head tortoise fashion.
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  Speaker 1: I mean put him on and come on obviously, and
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  Speaker 1: with a sudden vehemence, he dragged Bensendon from under the
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  Speaker 1: bed and began to dress him for his new impersonation
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  Speaker 1: of an elderly woman of the people. He rolled up
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  Speaker 1: his trousers and made him kick off his slippers, took
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  Speaker 1: off his collar and tie and coat and vest, slipped
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  Speaker 1: a black skirt over his head, and put on a
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  Speaker 1: red flannel bodice and a body over the seine. He
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  Speaker 1: made him take off his all two characteristic spectacles, and
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  Speaker 1: clapped the bonnet on his head. He might have been
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  Speaker 1: born an old woman, he said, as he tired the strings.
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  Speaker 1: Then came the spring side boots, a terrible wretch fris corns,
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  Speaker 1: and the shawl and the skies was concleep up and down,
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  Speaker 1: said Cosser, and Benziton obeyed Yodo, said Cossar. And in
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  Speaker 1: this guise it was stumbling awkwardly over his unaccustomed skirts,
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  Speaker 1: shouting womanly in precations upon his own head in a
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  Speaker 1: weird falsetto to sustain his part, and to the roaring
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: note of a crowd bent upon lynching him. That the
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: original discoverer of Heraclophobia four proceeded down the corridor of
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Chesterfield Mansions mingled with that inflamed, disorderly multitude, and passed
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: out altogether from the threat of events that constitutes our story.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Never once after that escape did he met again with
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the stupendous development of the food of the gods. He,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of all men, had done most to begin. Three, this
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: little man who started the whole thing passes out of
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the story, and after time he passed altogether out of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the world of things visible and tellible. But because he
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: started the whole thing, it is seeming to give his
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: exit an inter calorie page of attention. One may picture
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: him in his later days as Tunbridge Wells came to
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: know him, For it was at Tunbridge Wells he reappeared
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: after a temporary obscurity, so soon as he fully realized
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: how transitory, how quite exceptional and unmeaning, that fury of
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: writing was reappeared under the wing of cousin Jane, treating
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: himself for nervous shock, to the exclusion of all other interests,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and totally indifferent, as it seemed, to the battles that
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: were raging then about those new centers of distribution and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: about the baby children the food. He took up his
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: quarters at the Mount Glory hydrotherapeutic hotel, where there are
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: quite extraordinary facilities for baths, carbonated baths, creosope baths, galvanic
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and farratic treatment, massage, pine baths, starch and hemlock baths,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: radium baths, light baths, heat baths, brand and needle baths,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: tar and birds down baths, all sorts of baths. And
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: he devoted his mind to the development of that system
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of curative treatment that was still imperfect when he died.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And sometimes he would go down in a hired vehicle
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and a seal skin trimmed coat, and sometimes, when his
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: feet permitted, he'd walk to the pantils, and there he
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: would sip challie beat water onto the eyes of his
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: cousin Jane. His stooping shoulders, his pink appearance, his beaming
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: glasses became a feature of Tunbridge Wells. No one was
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the least bit unkind to him, and indeed the place
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: and the hotel seemed very glad to have the distinction
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of his presence. Nothing could rob him of that distinction now.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And though he preferred not to follow the development of
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: his great invention in the daily papers, yet when he
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: crossed the lounge to the hotel, or walked down to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the pantiils and heard the whisper. There he is, that's him.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: It was not dissatisfaction that often his mouth and gleamed
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: for a moment in his eye. This little figure, this
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: minute little figure, launched the food of the gods upon
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the world. One does not know what is the most amazing,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the greatness or the lilness of these scientific and philosophical men.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: You figure him there on the pantels and the overcoat
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: trimmed with fur. He stands under that chinaware window where
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the spring spouts, and holds and steps the glass of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: challi beet water in his hand. One bright eye over
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the gilt rim is fixed when an expression of inscrutable
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: severity on cousin Jane. Hmm, he says, and SIPs. So
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: we make our souvenir. So we focus and photograph this
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: discoverer of our hours for our last time, and leave
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: him a rea dot in our foreground, and pass through
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the greater picture that has developed about him, to the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: story of his food. How the scattered giant children grew
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: up day by day into a world that was all
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: too small for them, and how the net of boom
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: food laws and Boom Food conventions, which the Boom Food
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Commission was weaving even then, drew closer and closer upon
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: them with every year of their growth, until end Chapter five,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: end of Book one of the Food of the Gods
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. Recording by Alexetalander Davis, California,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: www dot Alyxtalander dot com