"What? My blood, sir. I opened a vein the very day they hanged him. I suspected it all along, and there it is. There is more arsenic there, sir, than they found in the entire carcass of that man. Arsenic! Why, it's a prime ingredient in the blood. This it is to live in the clouds. Talk of dark ages—when shall we get light?"
"I was not aware, Mr Planner,"——
"Of course you were not. How should you be? It is the interest of the ruling powers to darken the intellect of society. Why am I kept down? Why don't I prosper? Why don't my works sell? Ah, Allcraft—put that small pamphlet in your pocket—there it is—under the model—take care what you are about—don't break it—there, that's right! What is it called?"
"Popular delusions."
"Ah, true enough!—put it into your pocket and read it. If Pitt could be alive to read it!—-- Well, never mind! I say, Allcraft, how does that back room flue get on—any smoke now?"
"None."
"No. I should think not. Michael, I must say it, though the old gentleman is dead, he was one of the hardest fellows to move I ever met. He would have been smoke-dried—suffocated, years ago, if it hadn't been for me. I was the first man that ever sent smoke up that chimney. Nobody could do it, sir. A fellow came from London, tried, and failed."
"It is a pity, Mr Planner, that, with abilities like yours, you have not been more successful in life. Pardon me if I say that success would have made you a quieter and a happier man."
"Ah, Michael, so your father used to say! Well, I don't know—people are such fools. They will not think for themselves, and they are ready to crush any one who offers to think for them. It has ever been so. Men in advance of their generation have always fared badly. Ages ago they were put to death cruelly and violently. Now they are left to starve, and die. The creatures are ignorant, but they are worse than that; they are selfish and jealous, and will rather sit in gloom, than owe light, and confess they owe it, to a fellow mortal and a superior spirit."
"I am afraid, Mr Planner, after such an observation, that you will hardly give me credit for the feeling which has induced me to visit you this morning."