Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells (top romance novels txt) 📖
- Author: H. G. Wells
Book online «When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells (top romance novels txt) 📖». Author H. G. Wells
But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles. As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. “What was that?” he asked. “I did not see.”
The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping down. When the aeropile was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied. “That,” and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, “was a swan.”
“I never saw it,” said Graham.
The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his forehead.
They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger’s place out of the lash of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, with the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.
Soon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw that the roofs about the flying stage were dark with his people rejoicing over his safe return. A dark mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.
CHAPTER XVII. THREE DAYS
Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying Graham was in a mood of enthusiasm. “I must learn to fly,” he cried. “I must master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in the world.”
“You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences,” said Lincoln. “I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that may seem novel.”
“For the present,” said Graham, “flying holds me. Let me learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to one’s learning.”
“There is, I believe,” said Lincoln. “But for you—! If you would’ like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut tomorrow.”
Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a while. “And as for affairs,” he asked abruptly. “How are things going on?”
Lincoln waved affairs aside. “Ostrog will tell you that tomorrow,” he said. “Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itself all over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course; but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog’s hands.”
“Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it, forthwith—before I sleep?” said Graham, pacing. “Then I could be at it the very first thing tomorrow again.
“It would be possible,” said Lincoln thoughtfully. “Quite possible. Indeed, it shall be done.” He laughed. “I came prepared to suggest amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will be able to come. You don’t think that after you have dined, you might prefer—?” He paused.
“Yes,” said Graham.
“We had prepared a show of dancers—they have been brought from the Capri theatre.”
“I hate ballets,” said Graham, shortly. “Always did. That other—. That’s not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the matter of that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying—”
“True,” said Lincoln. “Though our dancers—”
“They can afford to wait,” said Graham; “they can afford to wait. I know. I’m not a Latin. There’s questions I want to ask some expert—about your machinery. I’m keen. I want no distractions.”
“You have the world to choose from,” said Lincoln; “whatever you want is yours.”
Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned through the city streets to Graham’s apartments. Far larger crowds had assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned Lincoln’s answers to the endless questions Graham’s aerial journey had suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already a little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the remainder of his public progress.
Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched Graham’s commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by a number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habit of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish for that indulgence, inquiries were made and some excellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him by pneumatic dispatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity of counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating to Graham than any bayadere. “We were savages,” was his refrain, “we were savages. We were in the stone age—compared with this.... And what else have you?”
There came also practical psychologists with some very interesting developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell, Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anaesthetics in medicine; was employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A real enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this direction. The feats of “calculating boys,” the wonders, as Graham had been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the
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