Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (396 page)
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Authors: Jerome K. Jerome
I said:
“I suppose you can’t abolish her?”
“Well, not altogether,” he replied. “We only wish we could. But,” he added afterward, with pardonable pride, “we’ve done a good deal.”
I said:
“How about an exceptionally clever man. What do you do with him?”
“Well, we are not much troubled in that way now,” he answered. “We have not come across anything dangerous in the shape of brain-power for some very considerable time now. When we do, we perform a surgical operation upon the head, which softens the brain down to the average level.”
“I have sometimes thought,” mused the old gentleman, “that it was a pity we could not level up sometimes, instead of always leveling down; but, of course, that is impossible.”
I said:
“Do you think it right of you to cut these people up, and tone them down, in this manner?”
He said:
“Of course, it is right.”
“You seem very cock-sure about the matter,” I retorted. “Why is it ‘of course’ right?”
“Because it is done by THE MAJORITY.”
“How does that make it right?” I asked.
“A MAJORITY can do no wrong,” he answered.
“Oh! is that what the people who are lopped think?”
“They?” he replied, evidently astonished at the question. “Oh, they are in the minority, you know.”
“Yes; but even the minority has a right to its arms and legs and heads, hasn’t it?”
“A minority has NO rights,” he answered.
I said:
“It’s just as well to belong to the Majority, if you’re thinking of living here, isn’t it?”
He said:
“Yes; most of our people do. They seem to think it more convenient.”
I was finding the town somewhat uninteresting, and I asked if we could not go out into the country for a change.
My guide said:
“Oh, yes, certainly”; but did not think I should care much for it.
“Oh! but it used to be so beautiful in the country,” I urged, “before I went to bed. There were great green trees, and grassy, wind-waved meadows, and little rose-decked cottages, and—”
“Oh, we’ve changed all that,” interrupted the old gentleman; “it is all one huge market-garden now, divided by roads and canals cut at right angles to each other. There is no beauty in the country now whatever. We have abolished beauty; it interfered with our equality. It was not fair that some people should live among lovely scenery, and others upon barren moors. So we have made it all pretty much alike everywhere now, and no place can lord it over another.”
“Can a man emigrate into any other country?” I asked; “it doesn’t matter what country — any other country would do.”
“Oh yes, if he likes,” replied my companion; “but why should he? All lands are exactly the same. The whole world is all one people now — one language, one law, one life.”
“Is there no variety, no change anywhere?” I asked. “What do you do for pleasure, for recreation? Are there any theatres?”
“No,” responded my guide. “We had to abolish theatres — the histrionic temperament seemed utterly unable to accept the principles of equality. Each actor thought himself the best actor in the world, and superior, in fact, to most other people altogether. I don’t know whether it was the same in your day?”
“Exactly the same,” I answered, “but we did not take any notice of it.”
“Ah! we did,” he replied, “and, in consequence, shut the theatres up. Besides, our White Ribbon Vigilance Society said that all places of amusement were vicious and degrading; and being an energetic and stout-winded band, they soon won THE MAJORITY over to their views; and so all amusements are prohibited now.”
I said:
“Are you allowed to read books?”
“Well,” he answered, “there are not many written. You see, owing to our all living such perfect lives, and there being no wrong, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or love, or grief in the world, and everything being so regular and so proper, there Is really nothing much to write about — except, of course, the Destiny of Humanity.”
“True!” I said, “I see that. But what of the old works, the classics? You had Shakespeare, and Scott, and Thackeray, and there were one or two little things of my own that were not half-bad. What have you done with all those?”
“Oh, we have burned all those old works,” he said. “They were full of the old, wrong notions of the old, wrong, wicked times, when men were merely slaves and beasts of burden.”
He said, all the old paintings and sculptures had been likewise destroyed, partly for that same reason, and partly because they were considered improper by the White Ribbon Vigilance Society — which was a great power now — while all new art and literature were forbidden, as such things tended to undermine the principles of equality. They made men think and the men that thought grew cleverer than those that did not want to think; and those that did not want to think naturally objected to this, and being in THE MAJORITY, objected to some purpose.
He said that, from like considerations, there were no sports or games permitted. Sports and games caused competition, and competition led to inequality.
I said: “How long do your citizens work each day?”
“Three hours,” he answered, “after that, all the remainder of the day belongs to ourselves.”
“Ah! that is just what I was coming to,” I remarked. “Now, what do you do with yourselves during those other twenty-one hours?”
“Oh, we rest.”
“What! for the whole twenty-one hours?”
“Well, rest and think and talk.”
“What do you think and talk about?”
“Oh! Oh, about how wretched life must have been in the old times, and about how happy we are now, and — and — oh, and the Destiny of Humanity!”
“Don’t you ever get sick of the Destiny of Humanity?”
“No, not much.”
“And what do you understand by it? What
is
the Destiny of Humanity, do you think?”
“Oh! — why to — to go on being like we are now, only more so — everybody more equal, and more things done by electricity, and everybody to have two votes instead of one, and—”
“Thank you. That will do. Is there anything else that you think of? Have you got a religion?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you worship a God?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What do you call him?”
“THE MAJORITY.”
“One question more. You don’t mind my asking you all these questions, by the by, do you?”
“Oh, no. This is all part of my three hours’ labour for the State.”
“Oh, I’m glad of that. I should not like to feel that I was encroaching on your time for rest; but what I wanted to ask was, do many of the people here commit suicide?”
“No; such a thing never occurs to them.”
I looked at the faces of the men and women that were passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic, expression upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that look before; it seemed familiar to me.
All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet, troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to breed and keep in the old world.
No. These people would
not
think of suicide.
Strange! how very dim and indistinct all the faces are growing around me! And where is my guide? and why am I sitting on the pavement? and — hark! surely that is the voice of Mrs. Biggles, my old landlady. Has
she
been asleep a thousand years, too? She says it is twelve o’clock — only twelve? and I’m not to be washed till half-past four; and I do feel so stuffy and hot, and my head is aching. Hulloa! why, I’m in bed! Has it all been a dream? And am I back in the nineteenth century?
Through the open window I hear the rush and roar of old life’s battle. Men are fighting, striving, working, carving each man his own life with the sword of strength and will. Men are laughing, grieving, loving, doing wrong deeds, doing great deeds — falling, strugging, helping one another — living!
And I have a good deal more than three hours work to do to-day, and I meant to be up at seven; and, oh dear! I do wish I had not smoked so many strong cigars last night.
NOVEL NOTES
CONTENTS
NOVEL NOTES
To Big-Hearted, Big-Souled, Big-Bodied friend Conan Doyle
PROLOGUE
Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London. It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage leading down towards the river.
The house had many advantages, so my father would explain to friends who expressed surprise at his choosing such a residence, and among these was included in my own small morbid mind the circumstance that its back windows commanded an uninterrupted view of an ancient and much-peopled churchyard. Often of a night would I steal from between the sheets, and climbing upon the high oak chest that stood before my bedroom window, sit peering down fearfully upon the aged gray tombstones far below, wondering whether the shadows that crept among them might not be ghosts — soiled ghosts that had lost their natural whiteness by long exposure to the city’s smoke, and had grown dingy, like the snow that sometimes lay there.
I persuaded myself that they were ghosts, and came, at length, to have quite a friendly feeling for them. I wondered what they thought when they saw the fading letters of their own names upon the stones, whether they remembered themselves and wished they were alive again, or whether they were happier as they were. But that seemed a still sadder idea.
One night, as I sat there watching, I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I was not frightened, because it was a soft, gentle hand that I well knew, so I merely laid my cheek against it.
“What’s mumma’s naughty boy doing out of bed? Shall I beat him?” And the other hand was laid against my other cheek, and I could feel the soft curls mingling with my own.
“Only looking at the ghosts, ma,” I answered. “There’s such a lot of ’em down there.” Then I added, musingly, “I wonder what it feels like to be a ghost.”
My mother said nothing, but took me up in her arms, and carried me back to bed, and then, sitting down beside me, and holding my hand in hers — there was not so very much difference in the size — began to sing in that low, caressing voice of hers that always made me feel, for the time being, that I wanted to be a good boy, a song she often used to sing to me, and that I have never heard any one else sing since, and should not care to.
But while she sang, something fell on my hand that caused me to sit up and insist on examining her eyes. She laughed; rather a strange, broken little laugh, I thought, and said it was nothing, and told me to lie still and go to sleep. So I wriggled down again and shut my eyes tight, but I could not understand what had made her cry.
Poor little mother, she had a notion, founded evidently upon inborn belief rather than upon observation, that all children were angels, and that, in consequence, an altogether exceptional demand existed for them in a certain other place, where there are more openings for angels, rendering their retention in this world difficult and undependable. My talk about ghosts must have made that foolishly fond heart ache with a vague dread that night, and for many a night onward, I fear.