"C M Kornbluth - The Events Leading Down To Tragedy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

martial glory of Eleusis, and not fall victim to the "remodeling" craze.



Dr. Mord, with his characteristic smile (its first effect is unsettling, I confess, but when one later learns of
the kindly intentions behind it, one grows accustomed to his face) replied somewhat irrelevantly by asking
whether I had any dependents. He proceeded to a rather searching inquiry, explaining that as a man of
science he liked to be sure of his



facts. I advised him that I understood, diffidently mentioning that I was no stranger to scientific rigor, my
own grandfather having published a massive Evidences for the Phlogiston Theory of Heat.* Somehow
the interview concluded with Dr. Mord asking: "Mr. Spoynte, what do you consider your greatest
contribution to human knowledge and welfare, and do you suppose that you will ever surpass that
contribution?"
 I replied after consideration that no doubt my "high water mark" was my discovery of the 1777 Order
Book of the Wyalusing Militia Company in the basement of the Spodder Memorial Library, where it had
been lost to sight for thirty-eight years after being rhisfiled under "Indian Religions (Local)." To the
second part of his question I could only answer that it was given to few men twice to perform so
momentous a service to scholarship.



On this odd note we parted; it occurred to me as I wended my way home that I had not succeeded in
eliciting from the doctor a reply as to his intentions of preserving intact die Haddam house! But he
"struck" me as an innately conservative person, and I had little real fear of the remodeler's ruthless
hammer and saw.



This impression was reinforced during the subsequent month, for the doctor intimated that he would be
pleased to have me call on him Thursday evenings for a chat over the coffee cups.



These chats were the customary conversations of two teamed men of the world, skimming lightly over
knowledge's whole domain. Once, for example, Dr. Mord amusingly theorized that one of the most
difficult things in the world for a private person to do was to find a completely useless human being. The
bad men were in prison or hiding, he explained, and when one investigated the others it always turned out
Aat they had some redeeming quality or usefulness to somebody. "Almost always," he amended with a
laugh. At other Hoes he would question me deeply about my life and activist*, now and then muttering: "I
must be sure; I must be



тАвGenerally considered the last word on the subject though, as I