Books: Nonsense Novels
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Stephen Leacock >> Nonsense Novels
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"That's it," said my acquaintance, "I couldn't think of the word.
Your women, I believe, were something awful, were they not? Covered
with feathers and skins and dazzling colours made of dead things all
over them? And they laughed, did they not, and had foolish teeth, and
at any moment they could inveigle you into one of those contracts!
Ugh!"
He shuddered.
"Asbestos," I said (I knew no other name to call him), as I turned on
him in wrath, "Asbestos, do you think that those jelly-bag Equalities
out on the street there, with their ash-barrel suits, can be compared
for one moment with our unredeemed, unreformed, heaven-created,
hobble-skirted women of the twentieth century?"
Then, suddenly, another thought flashed into my mind--
"The children," I said, "where are the children? Are there any?"
"Children," he said, "no! I have never heard of there being any such
things for at least a century. Horrible little hobgoblins they must
have been! Great big faces, and cried constantly! And _grew_, did
they not? Like funguses! I believe they were longer each year than
they had been the last, and----"
I rose.
"Asbestos!" I said, "this, then, is your coming Civilisation, your
millennium. This dull, dead thing, with the work and the burden gone
out of life, and with them all the joy and sweetness of it. For the
old struggle--mere stagnation, and in place of danger and death, the
dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay! Give
me back," I cried, and I flung wide my arms to the dull air, "the old
life of danger and stress, with its hard toil and its bitter chances,
and its heartbreaks. I see its value! I know its worth! Give me no
rest," I cried aloud----
* * * * *
"Yes, but give a rest to the rest of the corridor!" cried an angered
voice that broke in upon my exultation.
Suddenly my sleep had gone.
I was back again in the room of my hotel, with the hum of the wicked,
busy old world all about me, and loud in my ears the voice of the
indignant man across the corridor.
"Quit your blatting, you infernal blatherskite," he was calling.
"Come down to earth."
I came.
THE END
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