Category: In the Days of the Comet

THIS WAS as much as this pleasant-looking grey-haired man had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and the high tower in which he was … Read the rest

IN THE end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as a shock ot me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects of their common training … Read the rest

NEXT DAY I came home to Clayton.

The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place for me. … Read the rest

SO FAR I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the general framework of human life, its effect of swift, … Read the rest

AND WHAT a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at which I was present, the council that was held two days later in Melmount’s bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the constitution of the World State. I … Read the rest

SO THE great day came to me.

And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world awoke.

For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the same tide of insensibility; in an … Read the rest

I SEEMED to awaken out of a refreshing sleep.

I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that glowed against a glowing sky. It was … Read the rest

AS THE train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordinary things, into the … Read the rest

FROM THAT moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging rebellion … Read the rest

“THAT comet is going to hit the earth!”

So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down.

“Ah!” said the older man.

“They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We … Read the rest