Up, barbers, and at him! Heat the water of your enthusiasm: lather those disguising appurtenances. See the tufts collapse into the white foam—feel the hairy jungles melt away before your steel! And at the end, when the last hair falls, you will wipe away the lather, and look upon that face and see—ah, what indeed?
I will not be so banal as to attempt to describe that sight in detail. You will have seen it already in your mind’s eye: “or else” (to quote Mr. Belloc)—“or else you will not; I cannot be positive which.” If not, you never will; if yes, what need to waste more of the compositor’s time? But of him who forges that razor, who arms those barbers, who gives them courage for their colossal task, of him shall a new Lucretius sing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Belloc, H. “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts.”
Bergson, H. “Time and Free-Will.”
Carroll, L. “Alice in Wonderland.”
—— —— “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”
Clerk Maxwell. “Collected Papers.”
Einstein. See Kant.
Hegel. See Einstein.
Kant. See Hegel.
Lear, E. “Nonsense Songs and Stories.”
Lucretius. “De Rerum Natura.”
Macaulay, Lord. “Essays.”
Mee, A. “Children’s Encyclopædia.”
Meredith, G. “The Shaving of Shagpat.”
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FOOTNOTES:
[41] Read before the Heretics Club, Cambridge, May 1922.
[42] The reading of this paper brought a string of informants eager to let me know that Mr. Wells had already written a story on this theme. I was grateful to them for having caused me to read the New Accelerator, which by some strange chance I had managed to miss: but Mr. Wells’s treatment is so wholly different from that which I have sketched that I feel no scruples in letting it stand: and, if amends are needed, at least I make him a present of the germ of a new tale, and so feel that honour should be satisfied.