"C M Kornbluth - Theory Of Rocketry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

salary, still nowhere equal to nine hundred teachers' salaries?



Dr. Henley Ragen, el magnifico, portentously turned a page; there was grim poetry in the gesture. He
transfixed the classroom (nine hundred classrooms) with Those Eyes. Abruptly he became Macbeth at
the Banquet prepar'd. With nervous hilarity he shouted at his guests, "You know your own degrees; sit
down! At first and last, the hearty welcome!" Stockstill at a lectern he darted around the table, bluffly
rallying the company, slipped off to chat, grimly merry, with the First Murtherer at the door, returned to
the banquet, stood in chilled horror at the Ghost in the chair, croaked, "The table's full."



Mr. Edel studied the faces of his seventy-two English i i4ers. They were in hypnotic states of varying
depths, except Foster. The Fireball was listening and learning, his good mind giving as well as taking. The
intelligent face was alive, the jaw firm, and around him eyes were dull and jaws went slack. Foster could
speak and write an English sentence, which perhaps was the great distinguishing mark between him and
the rest of English 114. Blurted fragments of thought came from them, and the thoughts were cliches a
hundred times out of a hundred.



Dr. Henley Ragen growled at them, "We are yet but young in deed . . ." and his eyes said the rest,
promising horrors to come. He snapped the book shut like a pistol's bang; the i i4ers popped out of their
trances into dazed attentiveness. "Notebooks!" said Ragen (qua Ragen) and, seventy-two gunfighters
quick on the draw, they snapped out books and poised their pens. Ragen spoke for ten minutes about
the scene; every so often Those Eyes and an intensification of That Voice cued them to write a word or a
phrase, almost without glancing at the paper. (Later each would look at his notes and not be surprised to
find them lucid, orderly, even masterful summations of the brief lecture.)



As Dr. Henley Ragen bluffly delivered a sort of benediction from the altar of learning, Mr. Edel thought,
Well, they've got the Banquet Scene now; they'll own it forever. The way they own the Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales, the "Ode to the West Wind," Arroiusmith. A good deal better than nothing; pauca sed
matura. Or so he supposed.



That afternoon from three to five Mr. Edel was available to his advisees. It was a period usually devoted
to catching up on his paperwork; beyond making out the students' assignment schedule, a task
traditionally considered beyond the capacity of the young, he had done no advising in years. And Foster
appeared.



His handshake was manly, his grin was modest but compelling. He got to the point. "Mr. Edel, do you
think I could swing an Enrichment Project in English?"