The Scarlet Plague | Page 7

men and. women we taught were called students. We had large rooms in which we taught.
I talked to them, forty or fifty at a time, just as I am talking to you now. I told them about
the books other men had written before their time, and even, sometimes, in their time--"
"Was that all you did?--just talk, talk, talk?" Hoo-Hoo demanded. "Who hunted your
meat for you? and milked the goats? and caught the fish?"
"A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question. As I have told you, in those days
food-getting was easy. We were very wise. A few men got the food for many men. The
other men did other things. As you say, I talked. I talked all the time, and for this food

was given me-much food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty
years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful achievement of
our tremendous civilization was food--its inconceivable abundance, its infinite variety, its
marvellous delicacy. O my grandsons, life was life in those days, when we had such
wonderful things to eat."
This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts, as a mere senile
wandering in the narrative.
"Our food-getters were called freemen. This was a joke. We of the ruling classes owned
all the land, all the machines, everything. These food-getters were our slaves. We took
almost all the food they got, and left them a little so that they might eat, and work, and
get us more food--"
"I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself," Hare-Lip announced; "and if any
man tried to take it away from me, I'd have killed him"
The old man laughed.
"Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all the forest, everything?
Any food-getter who would not get food for us, him we punished or compelled to starve
to death. And very few did that. They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for
us, and prepare and administer to us a thousand--a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo--a thousand
satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those days--Professor James
Howard Smith. And my lecture courses were very popular--that is, very many of the
young men and women liked to hear me talk about the books other men had written.
"And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands were soft,
because I did no work with them, and my body was clean all over and dressed in the
softest garments--" He surveyed his mangy goatskin with disgust. "We did not wear such
things in those days. Even the slaves had better garments. And we were most clean. We
washed our faces and hands often every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into
the water or go in swimming."
"Neither do you, Granser," Hoo-Hoo retorted.
"I know, I know. I am a filthy old man. But times have changed. No-body washes these
days, and there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap.
You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling the story of the
Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called it a disease. Very many of the
diseases came from what we called germs. Remember that word-germs. A germ is a very
small thing. It is like a woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year
when they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that you cannot see
it--"
Hoo-Hoo began to laugh.
"You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you can't see 'em, how

do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How do you know anything you can't
see?"
"A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see-some of them. We had
what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put them to our eyes and
looked through them, so that we saw things larger than they really were, and many things
we could not see without the microscopes at all. Our best ultramicroscopes could make a
germ look forty thousand times larger.
A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as
many times larger was the germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after
that, we had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the
forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still.
And thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see. Take a
grain of sand.