"Wells, H G - Soul Of A Bishop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

It was probably the bright hard spring sunshine that emphasized
the contrast between that dear England of hedges and homes and
the south-west wind in which his imagination lived, and the crude
presences of a mechanical age. Never before had the cuttings and
heapings, the smashing down of trees, the obtrusion of corrugated
iron and tar, the belchings of smoke and the haste, seemed so
harsh and disregardful of all the bishop's world. Across the
fields a line of gaunt iron standards, abominably designed,
carried an electric cable to some unknown end. The curve of the
hill made them seem a little out of the straight, as if they
hurried and bent forward furtively.

"Where are they going?" asked the bishop, leaning forward to
look out of the window of the fly, and then: "Where is it all
going?"

And presently the road was under repair, and was being done at
a great pace with a huge steam-roller, mechanically smashed
granite, and kettles of stinking stuff, asphalt or something of
that sort, that looked and smelt like Milton's hell. Beyond, a
gaunt hoarding advertised extensively the Princhester Music Hall,
a mean beastly place that corrupted boys and girls; and also it
clamoured of tyres and potted meats....

The afternoon's conference gave him no reassuring answer to his
question, "Where is it all going?"

The afternoon's conference did no more than intensify the new
and strange sense of alienation from the world that the morning's
talk had evoked.

The three labour extremists that Morrice Deans had assembled
obviously liked the bishop and found him picturesque, and were
not above a certain snobbish gratification at the purple-trimmed
company they were in, but it was clear that they regarded his
intervention in the great dispute as if it were a feeble waving
from the bank across the waters of a great river.

"There's an incurable misunderstanding between the modern
employer and the modern employed," the chief labour spokesman
said, speaking in a broad accent that completely hid from him and
the bishop and every one the fact that he was by far the
best-read man of the party. "Disraeli called them the Two
Nations, but that was long ago. Now it's a case of two species.
Machinery has made them into different species. The employer
lives away from his work-people, marries a wife foreign, out of a
county family or suchlike, trains his children from their very
birth in a different manner. Why, the growth curve is different
for the two species. They haven't even a common speech between
them. One looks east and the other looks west. How can you expect