Penguin Island [107]
pen, began to write out a list of horses that would win at the next race meeting. For he was a book-maker's clerk.
In the mean time Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its zenith.
Book VII. FUTURE TIMES
THE ENDLESS HISTORY
Alca is becoming Americanised.--M. Daniset.
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.--Genesis xix. 25
{greek here](Herodotus, Histories, VII cii.)
Poverty hast ever been familiar to Greece, but virtue has been acquired, having been accomplished by wisdom and firm laws.-- Henry Cary's Translation.
You have not seen angels then.--Liber Terribilis.
Bqfttfusftpvtuse jufbmmbb b up sjufef tspjtfucftfnqfsfvstbqsftbnpjsqsp dmbnfuspjtghjttdmjcfsufnbgsbodftftutpbnjtfbeftdpnqb hojtgjobo -- difsftr -- vjejtqpteoueftsjdifttftevqbzt fuqbsmfn Pzfoevofqsf ttfbdifuffejsjhfboumpqjojno Voufnpjoxfsiejrvf
We are now beginning to study a chemistry which will deal with effects produced by bodies containing a quantity of concentrated energy the like of which we have not yet had at our disposal.--Sir William Ramsay.
S. I
The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.
Fifteen millions of men laboured in a giant town by the light of beacons which shed forth their glare both day and night. No light of heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the town was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a rayless sun might be seen riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges ploughed their way, and from which there descended a continual shower of soot and cinders. It was the most industrial of all the cities in the world and the richest. Its organisation seemed perfect. None of the ancient aristocratic or democratic forms remained; everything was subordinated to the interests of the trusts. This environment gave rise to what anthropologists called the multi-millionaire type. The men of this type were at once energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming mental combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose nervous irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which increased as time went on.
Like all true aristocrats, like the patricians of republican Rome or the squires of old England, these powerful men affected a great severity in their habits and customs. They were the ascetics of wealth. At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed their smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken eyes and wrinkled brows. With bodies more withered, complexions yellower, lips drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism than those of the old Spanish monks, these multimillionaires gave themselves up with inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of banking and industry. Several, denying themselves all happiness, all pleasure, and all rest, spent their miserable lives in rooms without light or air, furnished only with electrical apparatus, living on eggs and milk, and sleeping on camp beds. By doing nothing except pressing nickel buttons with their fingers, these mystics heaped up riches of which they never even saw the signs, and acquired the vain possibility of gratifying desires that they never experienced.
The worship
In the mean time Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its zenith.
Book VII. FUTURE TIMES
THE ENDLESS HISTORY
Alca is becoming Americanised.--M. Daniset.
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.--Genesis xix. 25
{greek here](Herodotus, Histories, VII cii.)
Poverty hast ever been familiar to Greece, but virtue has been acquired, having been accomplished by wisdom and firm laws.-- Henry Cary's Translation.
You have not seen angels then.--Liber Terribilis.
Bqfttfusftpvtuse jufbmmbb b up sjufef tspjtfucftfnqfsfvstbqsftbnpjsqsp dmbnfuspjtghjttdmjcfsufnbgsbodftftutpbnjtfbeftdpnqb hojtgjobo -- difsftr -- vjejtqpteoueftsjdifttftevqbzt fuqbsmfn Pzfoevofqsf ttfbdifuffejsjhfboumpqjojno Voufnpjoxfsiejrvf
We are now beginning to study a chemistry which will deal with effects produced by bodies containing a quantity of concentrated energy the like of which we have not yet had at our disposal.--Sir William Ramsay.
S. I
The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.
Fifteen millions of men laboured in a giant town by the light of beacons which shed forth their glare both day and night. No light of heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the town was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a rayless sun might be seen riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges ploughed their way, and from which there descended a continual shower of soot and cinders. It was the most industrial of all the cities in the world and the richest. Its organisation seemed perfect. None of the ancient aristocratic or democratic forms remained; everything was subordinated to the interests of the trusts. This environment gave rise to what anthropologists called the multi-millionaire type. The men of this type were at once energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming mental combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose nervous irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which increased as time went on.
Like all true aristocrats, like the patricians of republican Rome or the squires of old England, these powerful men affected a great severity in their habits and customs. They were the ascetics of wealth. At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed their smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken eyes and wrinkled brows. With bodies more withered, complexions yellower, lips drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism than those of the old Spanish monks, these multimillionaires gave themselves up with inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of banking and industry. Several, denying themselves all happiness, all pleasure, and all rest, spent their miserable lives in rooms without light or air, furnished only with electrical apparatus, living on eggs and milk, and sleeping on camp beds. By doing nothing except pressing nickel buttons with their fingers, these mystics heaped up riches of which they never even saw the signs, and acquired the vain possibility of gratifying desires that they never experienced.
The worship