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Since the inception of The Naked Collector in 2021, I’ve been one of the leading voices in Web3 consumer and specifically Web3 fashion research. My , has attracted a loyal following from industry giants, including  H&M, Harvard Business School, Adidas, JP Morgan and Coinbase. private newsletter Today, I'm thrilled to unveil the enigmatic world of Web3 fashion and corporate (Web2) NFTs to a wider audience. As a recognized authority in this niche, I've had the unique privilege of observing and shaping emerging trends, which positions me ideally to present these awards. The awards represent the innovative spirit and transformative potential of Web3. They serve to acknowledge remarkable contributions and groundbreaking advancements in this rapidly evolving field. Best Web3 Success Story: Pudgy Penguins In April 2022, Pudgy Penguins was considered a dead project. However, under the new leadership of Luca Netz, the brand has undergone remarkable innovation and growth. This resurgence is best exemplified by the introduction of Pudgy Penguin Toys, now shelved in 2000 Walmart stores. These toys not only offer physical enjoyment but also unlock unique NFT traits, including clothing, which users can interact with and trade online. A key to their success is the strategic use of NFTs as Intellectual Property (IP) to generate revenue. Pudgy Penguins from May to the end of the year, demonstrating a lucrative intersection between physical products and digital assets. What sets them apart is their approach to community engagement; Pudgy Toys are licensed directly from the community, marking a pioneering move in the market. anticipates toy sales to reach approximately $10 million In 2023, the brand expanded its portfolio by launching Pudgy Toys and the IGLOO fashion line. Looking ahead to 2024, Pudgy Penguins is set to join the ranks of BAYC, Azuki, and RTFKT by launching its own metaverse, "Pudgy World." Best Web2* (Fashion) Success Story: PUMA Puma NFT collections went largely under the radar but amassed 4th largest volume among Web2 brand NFTs (after DraftKings, Nike and Porsche). Notably, while PUMA's revenue in the traditional sportswear market reached only 35% of Adidas' revenue, its 2023 NFT sales volume impressively exceeded that of Adidas by 450%. Furthermore, PUMA's Web3 royalties achieved 73% of Adidas' figures. A notable aspect of PUMA's NFT success is its ability to attract new participants in the digital asset space. Approximately 33% of its NFT buyers were beginners (wallets with less than 10 transactions), compared to the average of 18% across both Web3 fashion and other Web2 brand NFT collections. This statistic underscores PUMA's role in expanding the reach and appeal of NFTs beyond the traditional market. Best Web2 (Non-Fashion) Success Story: DraftKings DraftKings has emerged as a leader in the non-fashion Web2 space, thanks to its NFT-enabled fantasy games, including Reignmakers Football, UFC, & PGA Tour. The NFTs are minted on the Polygon blockchain and DraftKings games have amassed the largest NFT volume in 2023 among all Web2 brands. According to CryptoSlam data, the collections accumulated a total volume of $251,409,713 since February (as of December 2023). This achievement ranks them as the 25th most traded NFT collection of all time in less than a year, with over 120,000 holders. Notably, the collection also secured the highest royalties among Web2 brands, totaling $25 million. A key strategy of DraftKings has been targeting regular users, especially those not native to the Web3 space. By trading on the Polygon blockchain and simplifying the process – such as allowing payment for NFTs with credit cards and minimizing Web3 complexities like gas fees and cryptocurrencies – they have made their platform more accessible. Additionally, DraftKings' ownmarketplace facilitates these trades, from which the company garners a 10% marketplace fee. Given the projected growth of the U.S. online sports betting market – estimated to reach an annual $12.5 billion by 2025, up from $6.8 billion in 2022 (Stifel Research) – and the inherent suitability of NFTs for fantasy sports, DraftKings' volume is expected to continue its upward trajectory. Web2 Brand With Most Holders (Users): Reddit As of December 2023, Reddit had the most NFT holders with 24.9M, according to Polygon Analytics). For comparison, below is the holder situation in October 2023, from . The Naked Collector Fashion in Web3 Industry Report Biggest Disappointment: RTFKT Despite being at the forefront of merging Web3 with fashion technology and gaining publicity through endorsements from celebrities, RTFKT emerges as the year's biggest disappointment, primarily due to the lofty expectations placed upon it. While Nike’s own native dotSWOOSH ID collection saw 376,000 holders mint the ID, RTFKT saw its performance numbers decline. While RTFKT continued to dominate the fashion volume charts for the second consecutive year, the market witnessed a significant decline in the value of its collections. The Clone X floor price, for instance, plummeted from $8.5K in February 2023 (and an all-time high of $67K in April 2022) to just over $3K by December 2023. The most affected were holders of secondary collections such as CryptoKicks, EVO X Vials, MNLTHs, Trillium Lace Engines and Loot Pods, primarily due to their redeemable nature — a development that caught many by surprise. some of which lost nearly all value RTFKT’s downturn can be partly attributed to delays in production processes. However, a larger factor was the misalignment between holder expectations and project delivery, exacerbated by insufficient communication (from many holders’ point of view). The floor price, a reflection of current and projected sentiment, suggests that if RTFKT successfully advances its Wear to Earn technology and metaverse ecosystem, it could positively influence both the floor prices and the overall sentiment around the project. There have also been glimpses of RTFKT’s potential for mainstream adoption, evidenced by LeBron James wearing theRTFKT x Nike Air Force 1 - Genesis sneakers and DJ Khaled sporting the Nike x RTFKT AR Hoodie. Whether the same holders who supported RTFKT from the beginning will still be here, is another question. Most Surprising Web2 Brand Entry: Maison Margiela Maison Margiela marked its entry into the Web3 space with a unique and surprising move, launching its first gamified minting experience on October 24. Participants were given the chance to collect 24 distinctly numbered digital tokens, numbered from 0 to 23. This innovative endeavor utilized "Polygon Soul-Bound Tokens," which are non-transferable and allowed each participant to mint only one of each type. The experience was gas-free, emphasizing user accessibility and ease. The competition, designed to be fast-paced and equitable, was set to conclude once all 100 numbers were minted. Despite its intriguing approach to gamifying FOMO (fear of missing out), the minting experience garnered some negative feedback, particularly concerning its perceived difficulty. Biggest Fashion Trend: Phygitals one of the most significant trends in fashion NFTs this year has been the rise of 'phygitals' – physical fashion items linked to NFTs through embedded NFC or RFID chips. This trend aligns with the growing narrative around RWAs (real-world assets) within the broader crypto space, indicating a continuing expansion in the future. As predicted in 2022, In 2023, underscoring their rising popularity. The next evolution of this trend is expected to involve the integration of real-world data, such as ESG and sports data, through oracles. Other anticipated developments include the collateralization of high-value items, like luxury watches, and the introduction of physical-to-digital perks, exempli ed by concepts like 'wear to earn.' phygitals emerged as the most popular product release category among Web2 fashion brands, (From The Naked Collector Fashion in Web3 Industry Report) Largest Avg. Profit in 2023 (Web2 fashion collection):Nike/RTFKT CloneX Mintvial ($1,751) Largest Avg. ROI in 2023 (Web3 fashion collection): A Kid Called Beast ($684) The "A Kid Called Beast" (AKCB) collection has emerged as a standout in the 2023 Web3 fashion sector. This collection features 9,999 unique, 3D characters that are ready for augmented reality, hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. Each character belongs to one of 20 distinct "beasthoods," symbolizing various personality traits and emphasizing the collection's focus on fashion and cultural representation. Gaining traction on platforms like OpenSea, AKCB's innovative approach to distribution and its strong identity as a Web3 brand have been pivotal in fostering a robust community around these digital collectibles. Secondary Volume in 2023 (Web2 vs. Web3 Fashion) We can see that Web2 brands dominated the fashion NFT volume in 2023. This dominance was evident not only in the absolute volume of transactions but also in the average volume per collection. The data analyzed included 46 Web2 and 31 Web3 NFT collections, representing an 11% difference in the number of collections. However, the disparity in volume was far more significant, with a 106% higher volume for Web2 brands compared to their Web3 counterparts. This substantial difference underscores the prevailing influence of Web2 entities in the fashion NFT space. Secondary Volume in 2023 (All Web2 brands) When it comes to Web2 brand volume in 2023 (including non-fashion NFTs), DraftKings and Nike/RTFKT have established a clear lead over their competitors. Their performance notably overshadowed even the highly publicized Starbucks collection. It's important to acknowledge that both DraftKings and Nike/RTFKT bene ted from having a substantial supply of collections, a factor that likely contributed to their dominant positions in the market. Brand Primary Volume (Web2 Fashion) Nike is not only leading in secondary volume but primary (or mint) volume as well. Phygital Fashion Secondary Volume in 2023 (Web2 & Web3 Fashion) Nike/RTFKT is also the leader in phygital NFT secondary volume having three of their collections in the top 5. The most noteworthy is their Clone X Forging SZN 1, which saw 45.4K items forged, making it the largest phygital collection to date in terms of both volume and size. Additionally, their collaboration with RIMOWA for a phygital luggage collection ranked third in volume. The innovative cIRL sneakers, equipped with Wear to Earn functionality, placed fourth. 10KTF, a Web3 native brand, also made its mark in the top 5 with their Kagami phygital digital displays linked to their parent PFP collection. Meanwhile, PUMA's Materializer, an NFT representing a physical pair of shoes claimable in 2023, topped off the list. Highest Royalties in 2023 (All Web2 Brands): DraftKings ($25.1M) DraftKings had the highest Web2 royalties despite having the second largest volume, mainly due to their 10% marketplace fee. Highest Royalties in 2023 (Web3 Fashion): A Kid Called Beast ($1.8M) Want to Read More? Go to , to read how you can access the full report including Web3 user insights. https://thenakedcollector.substack.com/p/2023-recap-2023-2024-data-based-web3 Disclaimer The data in this report was generated directly by me through SQL queries on the Flipside Crypto platform This report is for informational purposes only. The information is as of its publication date and may change without notice. The publisher accepts no liability for any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. You are encouraged to share this report with others! The only request is to attribute the work to the author, The Naked Collector, in any sharing or reproduction of this material. When sharing digitally, please tag The Naked Collector or reference this work by citing the author properly. This report promotes the respectful exchange of information and acknowledges the hard work and expertise that went into creating this report. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. Also published . here

And the Web3 Award Goes To...

এবং Web3 অ্যাওয়ার্ড যায়...

Und der Web3 Award geht an...

Y el premio Web3 es para...

Et le prix Web3 est décerné à...

और Web3 पुरस्कार जाता है...

そしてWeb3賞は…

그리고 Web3 상은 다음으로 향합니다...

E o prêmio Web3 vai para...

И награда Web3 достаётся...

Ve Web3 Ödülünün Sahibi...

Và giải thưởng Web3 thuộc về...

Web3 奖颁发给...

We held a council, to decide on our future movements

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . FATHER AND SONS. here CHAPTER XXVII. FATHER AND SONS. Things were not going on any better at Hamley Hall. Nothing had occurred to change the state of dissatisfied feeling into which the Squire and his eldest son had respectively fallen; and the long continuance merely of dissatisfaction is sure of itself to deepen the feeling. Roger did all in his power to bring the father and son together; but sometimes wondered if it would not have been better to leave them alone; for they were falling into the habit of each making him their confidant, and so defining emotions and opinions which would have had less distinctness if they had been unexpressed. There was little enough relief in the daily life at the Hall to help them all to shake off the gloom; and it even told on the health of both the Squire and Osborne. The Squire became thinner, his skin as well as his clothes began to hang loose about him, and the freshness of his colour turned to red streaks, till his cheeks looked like Eardiston pippins, instead of resembling "a Katherine pear on the side that's next the sun." Roger thought that his father sate indoors and smoked in his study more than was good for him, but it had become difficult to get him far afield; he was too much afraid of coming across some sign of the discontinued drainage works, or being irritated afresh by the sight of his depreciated timber. Osborne was wrapt up in the idea of arranging his poems for the press, and so working out his wish for independence. What with daily writing to his wife—taking his letters himself to a distant post-office, and receiving hers there—touching up his sonnets, &c., with fastidious care—and occasionally giving himself the pleasure of a visit to the Gibsons, and enjoying the society of the two pleasant girls there, he found little time for being with his father. Indeed, Osborne was too self-indulgent or "sensitive," as he termed it, to bear well with the Squire's gloomy fits, or too frequent querulousness. The consciousness of his secret, too, made Osborne uncomfortable in his father's presence. It was very well for all parties that Roger was not "sensitive," for, if he had been, there were times when it would have been hard to bear little spurts of domestic tyranny, by which his father strove to assert his power over both his sons. One of these occurred very soon after the night of the Hollingford charity-ball. Roger had induced his father to come out with him; and the Squire had, on his son's suggestion, taken with him his long unused spud. The two had wandered far afield; perhaps the elder man had found the unwonted length of exercise too much for him; for, as he approached the house, on his return, he became what nurses call in children "fractious," and ready to turn on his companion for every remark he made. Roger understood the case by instinct, as it were, and bore it all with his usual sweetness of temper. They entered the house by the front door; it lay straight on their line of march. On the old cracked yellow-marble slab, there lay a card with Lord Hollingford's name on it, which Robinson, evidently on the watch for their return, hastened out of his pantry to deliver to Roger. "His lordship was very sorry not to see you, Mr. Roger, and his lordship left a note for you. Mr. Osborne took it, I think, when he passed through. I asked his lordship if he would like to see Mr. Osborne, who was indoors, as I thought. But his lordship said he was pressed for time, and told me to make his excuses." "Didn't he ask for me?" growled the Squire. "No, sir; I can't say as his lordship did. He would never have thought of Mr. Osborne, sir, if I hadn't named him. It was Mr. Roger he seemed so keen after." "Very odd," said the Squire. Roger said nothing, although he naturally felt some curiosity. He went into the drawing-room, not quite aware that his father was following him. Osborne sate at a table near the fire, pen in hand, looking over one of his poems, and dotting the 's, crossing the 's, and now and then pausing over the alteration of a word. i t "Oh, Roger!" he said, as his brother came in, "here's been Lord Hollingford wanting to see you." "I know," replied Roger. "And he's left a note for you. Robinson tried to persuade him it was for my father, so he's added a 'junior' (Roger Hamley, Esq., junior) in pencil." The Squire was in the room by this time, and what he had overheard rubbed him up still more the wrong way. Roger took his unopened note and read it. "What does he say?" asked the Squire. Roger handed him the note. It contained an invitation to dinner to meet M. Geoffroi St. H——, whose views on certain subjects Roger had been advocating in the article Lord Hollingford had spoken about to Molly, when he danced with her at the Hollingford ball. M. Geoffroi St. H—— was in England now, and was expected to pay a visit at the Towers in the course of the following week. He had expressed a wish to meet the author of the paper which had already attracted the attention of the French comparative anatomists; and Lord Hollingford added a few words as to his own desire to make the acquaintance of a neighbour whose tastes were so similar to his own; and then followed a civil message from Lord and Lady Cumnor. Lord Hollingford's hand was cramped and rather illegible. The squire could not read it all at once, and was enough put out to decline any assistance in deciphering it. At last he made it out. "So my lord lieutenant is taking some notice of the Hamleys at last. The election is coming on, is it? But I can tell him we're not to be got so easily. I suppose this trap is set for you, Osborne? What's this you've been writing that the French mounseer is so taken with?" "It is not me, sir!" said Osborne. "Both note and call are for Roger." "I don't understand it," said the Squire. "These Whig fellows have never done their duty by me; not that I want it of them. The Duke of Debenham used to pay the Hamleys a respect due to 'em—the oldest landowners in the county—but since he died, and this shabby Whig lord has succeeded him, I've never dined at the lord lieutenant's—no, not once." "But I think, sir, I've heard you say Lord Cumnor used to invite you,—only you did not choose to go," said Roger. "Yes. What d'ye mean by that? Do you suppose I was going to desert the principles of my family, and curry favour with the Whigs? No! leave that to them. They can ask the heir of the Hamleys fast enough when a county election is coming on." "I tell you, sir," said Osborne, in the irritable tone he sometimes used when his father was particularly unreasonable, "it is not me Lord Hollingford is inviting; it is Roger. Roger is making himself known for what he is, a first-rate fellow," continued Osborne—a sting of self-reproach mingling with his generous pride in his brother—"and he's getting himself a name; he's been writing about these new French theories and discoveries, and this foreign very naturally wants to make his acquaintance, and so Lord Hollingford asks him to dine. It's as clear as can be," lowering his tone, and addressing himself to Roger; "it has nothing to do with politics, if my father would but see it." savant Of course the Squire heard this little aside with the unlucky uncertainty of hearing which is a characteristic of the beginning of deafness; and its effect on him was perceptible in the increased acrimony of his next speech. "You young men think you know everything. I tell you it's a palpable Whig trick. And what business has Roger—if it is Roger the man wants—to go currying favour with the French? In my day we were content to hate 'em and to lick 'em. But it's just like your conceit, Osborne, setting yourself up to say it's your younger brother they're asking, and not you; I tell you it's you. They think the eldest son was sure to be called after his father, Roger—Roger Hamley, junior. It's as plain as a pike-staff. They know they can't catch me with chaff, but they've got up this French dodge. What business had you to go writing about the French, Roger? I should have thought you were too sensible to take any notice of their fancies and theories; but if it is you they've asked, I'll not have you going and meeting these foreigners at a Whig house. They ought to have asked Osborne. He's the representative of the Hamleys, if I'm not; and they can't get me, let 'em try ever so. Besides, Osborne has got a bit of the mounseer about him, which he caught with being so fond of going off to the Continent, instead of coming back to his good old English home." He went on repeating much of what he had said before, till he left the room. Osborne had kept on replying to his unreasonable grumblings, which had only added to his anger; and as soon as the Squire was fairly gone, Osborne turned to Roger, and said,— "Of course you'll go, Roger? ten to one he'll be in another mind to-morrow." "No," said Roger, bluntly enough—for he was extremely disappointed; "I won't run the chance of vexing him. I shall refuse." "Don't be such a fool!" exclaimed Osborne. "Really, my father is too unreasonable. You heard how he kept contradicting himself; and such a man as you to be kept under like a child by—" "Don't let us talk any more about it, Osborne," said Roger, writing away fast. When the note was written, and sent off, he came and put his hand caressingly on Osborne's shoulder, as he sate pretending to read, but in reality vexed with both his father and his brother, though on very different grounds. "How go the poems, old fellow? I hope they're nearly ready to bring out." "No, they're not; and if it weren't for the money, I shouldn't care if they were never published. What's the use of fame, if one mayn't reap the fruits of it?" "Come, now, we'll have no more of that; let's talk about the money. I shall be going up for my Fellowship examination next week, and then we'll have a purse in common, for they'll never think of not giving me a Fellowship now I'm senior wrangler. I'm short enough myself at present, and I don't like to bother my father; but when I'm Fellow, you shall take me down to Winchester, and introduce me to the little wife." "It will be a month next Monday since I left her," said Osborne, laying down his papers and gazing into the fire, as if by so doing he could call up her image. "In her letter this morning she bids me give you such a pretty message. It won't bear translating into English; you must read it for yourself," continued he, pointing out a line or two in a letter he drew from his pocket. Roger suspected that one or two of the words were wrongly spelt; but their purport was so gentle and loving, and had such a touch of simple, respectful gratitude in them, that he could not help being drawn afresh to the little unseen sister-in-law, whose acquaintance Osborne had made by helping her to look for some missing article of the children's, whom she was taking for their daily walk in Hyde Park. For Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been nothing more than a French , very pretty, very graceful, and very much tyrannized over by the rough little boys and girls she had in charge. She was a little orphan girl, who had charmed the heads of a travelling English family, as she had brought madame some articles of lingerie at an hotel; and she had been hastily engaged by them as to their children, partly as a pet and plaything herself, partly because it would be so good for the children to learn French from a native (of Alsace!). By-and-by her mistress ceased to take any particular notice of Aimée in the bustle of London and London gaiety; but though feeling more and more forlorn in a strange land every day, the French girl strove hard to do her duty. One touch of kindness, however, was enough to set the fountain gushing; and she and Osborne naturally fell into an ideal state of love, to be rudely disturbed by the indignation of the mother, when accident discovered to her the attachment existing between her children's and a young man of an entirely different class. Aimée answered truly to all her mistress's questions; but no worldly wisdom, nor any lesson to be learnt from another's experience, could in the least disturb her entire faith in her lover. Perhaps Mrs. Townshend did no more than her duty in immediately sending Aimée back to Metz, where she had first met with her, and where such relations as remained to the girl might be supposed to be residing. But, altogether, she knew so little of the kind of people or life to which she was consigning her deposed protégée that Osborne, after listening with impatient indignation to the lecture which Mrs. Townshend gave him when he insisted on seeing her in order to learn what had become of his love, that the young man set off straight for Metz in hot haste, and did not let the grass grow under his feet until he had made Aimée his wife. All this had occurred the previous autumn, and Roger did not know of the step his brother had taken until it was irrevocable. Then came the mother's death, which, besides the simplicity of its own overwhelming sorrow, brought with it the loss of the kind, tender mediatrix, who could always soften and turn his father's heart. It is doubtful, however, if even she could have succeeded in this, for the Squire looked high, and over high, for the wife of his heir; he detested all foreigners, and overmore held all Roman Catholics in dread and abomination something akin to our ancestors' hatred of witchcraft. All these prejudices were strengthened by his grief. Argument would always have glanced harmless away off his shield of utter unreason; but a loving impulse, in a happy moment, might have softened his heart to what he most detested in the former days. But the happy moments came not now, and the loving impulses were trodden down by the bitterness of his frequent remorse, not less than by his growing irritability; so Aimée lived solitary in the little cottage near Winchester in which Osborne had installed her when she first came to England as his wife, and in the dainty furnishing of which he had run himself so deeply into debt. For Osborne consulted his own fastidious taste in his purchases rather than her simple childlike wishes and wants, and looked upon the little Frenchwoman rather as the future mistress of Hamley Hall than as the wife of a man who was wholly dependent on others at present. He had chosen a southern county as being far removed from those midland shires where the name of Hamley of Hamley was well and widely known; for he did not wish his wife to assume, if only for a time, a name which was not justly and legally her own. In all these arrangements he had willingly striven to do his full duty by her; and she repaid him with passionate devotion and admiring reverence. If his vanity had met with a check, or his worthy desires for college honours had been disappointed, he knew where to go for a comforter; one who poured out praise till her words were choked in her throat by the rapidity of her thoughts, and who poured out the small vials of her indignation on every one who did not acknowledge and bow down to her husband's merits. If she ever wished to go to the château—that was his home—and to be introduced to his family, Aimée never hinted a word of it to him. Only she did yearn, and she did plead, for a little more of her husband's company; and the good reasons which had convinced her of the necessity of his being so much away when he was present to urge them, failed in their efficacy when she tried to reproduce them to herself in his absence. bonne bonne bonne The afternoon of the day on which Lord Hollingford called Roger was going upstairs, three steps at a time, when, at a turn on the landing, he encountered his father. It was the first time he had seen him since their conversation about the Towers' invitation to dinner. The Squire stopped his son by standing right in the middle of the passage. "Thou'rt going to meet the mounseer, my lad?" said he, half as affirmation, half as question. "No, sir; I sent off James almost immediately with a note declining it. I don't care about it—that's to say, not to signify." "Why did you take me up so sharp, Roger?" said his father pettishly. "You all take me up so hastily now-a-days. I think it's hard when a man mustn't be allowed a bit of crossness when he's tired and heavy at heart—that I do." "But, father, I should never like to go to a house where they had slighted you." "Nay, nay, lad," said the Squire, brightening up a little; "I think I slighted them. They asked me to dinner, after my lord was made lieutenant, time after time, but I never would go near 'em. I call that my slighting them." And no more was said at the time; but the next day the Squire again stopped Roger. "I've been making Jem try on his livery-coat that he hasn't worn this three or four years,—he's got too stout for it now." "Well, he needn't wear it, need he? and Morgan's lad will be glad enough of it,—he's sadly in want of clothes." "Ay, ay; but who's to go with you when you call at the Towers? It's but polite to call after Lord What's-his-name has taken the trouble to come here; and I shouldn't like you to go without a groom." "My dear father! I shouldn't know what to do with a man riding at my back. I can find my way to the stable-yard for myself, or there'll be some man about to take my horse. Don't trouble yourself about that." "Well, you're not Osborne, to be sure. Perhaps it won't strike 'em as strange for you. But you must look up, and hold your own, and remember you're one of the Hamleys, who've been on the same land for hundreds of years, while they're but trumpery Whig folk who only came into the county in Queen Anne's time." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (2003). Wives and Daughters. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4274/pg4274-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

FATHER AND SONS.

A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School by Catharine Esther Beecher, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . ON THE CARE OF THE SICK. here CHAPTER XXI. ON THE CARE OF THE SICK. Every woman who has the care of young children, or of a large family, is frequently called upon, to advise what shall be done, for some one who is indisposed; and often, in circumstances where she must trust solely to her own judgement. In such cases, some err, by neglecting to do any thing at all, till the patient is quite sick; but a still greater number err, from excessive and injurious dosing. The two great causes of the ordinary slight attacks of illness, in a family, are, sudden chills, which close the pores of the skin, and thus affect the throat, lungs, or bowels; and the excessive or improper use of food. In most cases, of illness from the first cause, bathing the feet, and some aperient drink to induce perspiration, are suitable remedies. A slight cathartic, also, is often serviceable. In case of illness from improper food, or excess in eating, , for one or two meals, to give the system time and chance to relieve itself, is the safest remedy. Sometimes, a gentle cathartic may be needful; but it is best first to try fasting. fasting The following extract from a discourse of Dr. Burne, before the London Medical Society, contains important information. "In civilized life, the causes, which are most generally and continually operating in the production of diseases, are, affections of the mind, improper diet, and retention of the intestinal excretions. The undue retention of excrementitious matter, allows of the absorption of its more liquid parts, which is a cause of great impurity to the blood, and the excretions, thus rendered hard and knotty, act more or less as extraneous substances, and, by their irritation, produce a determination of blood to the intestines and to the neighboring viscera, which ultimately ends in inflammation. It also has a great effect on the whole system; causes a determination of blood to the head, which oppresses the brain and dejects the mind; deranges the functions of the stomach; causes flatulency; and produces a general state of discomfort." Dr. Combe remarks, on this subject, "In the natural and healthy state, under a proper system of diet, and with sufficient exercise, the bowels are relieved regularly, once every day." "is powerful in modifying the result, and in sustaining healthy action when once fairly established. Hence the obvious advantage of observing as much regularity, in relieving the system, as in taking our meals." It is often the case that soliciting Nature at a regular period, once a day, will remedy constipation, without medicine, and induce a regular and healthy state of the bowels. "When,[Pg 236] however, as most frequently happens, the constipation arises from the absence of all assistance from the abdominal and respiratory muscles, the first step to be taken, is, again to solicit their aid; first, by removing all impediments to free respiration, such as stays, waistbands and belts; secondly, by resorting to such active exercises, as shall call the muscles into full and regular action; and, lastly, by proportioning the quantity of food to the wants of the system, and the condition of the digestive organs. If we employ these means, systematically and perseveringly, we shall rarely fail in at last restoring the healthy action of the bowels, with little aid from medicine. But if we neglect these modes, we may go on, for years, adding pill to pill, and dose to dose, without ever attaining the end at which we aim." There is no point, in which a woman needs more knowledge and discretion, than in administering remedies for what seem slight attacks, which are not supposed to require the attention of a physician. It is little realized, that purgative drugs are unnatural modes of stimulating the internal organs, tending to exhaust them of their secretions, and to debilitate and disturb the animal economy. For this reason, they should be used as little as possible; and fasting, and perspiration, and the other methods pointed out, should always be first resorted to. When medicine must be given, it should be borne in mind, that there are various classes of purgatives, which produce very diverse effects. Some, like salts, operate to thin the blood, and reduce the system; others are stimulating; and others have a peculiar operation on certain organs. Of course, great discrimination and knowledge is needed, in order to select the kind, which is suitable to the particular disease, or to the particular constitution of the invalid. This shows the folly of using the many kinds of pills, and other quack medicines, where no knowledge can be had of their composition. Pills which are good for one kind of disease, might operate as poison in another state of the system. It is wise to keep always on hand some simple cathartic, for family use, in slight attacks; and always to resort to medical advice, whenever powerful remedies seem to be demanded. It is very common, in cases of colds which affect the lungs or throat, to continue to try one dose after another, for relief. It will be well to bear in mind, at such times, that all which goes into the stomach, must be first absorbed into the blood, before it can reach the diseased part; and that there is some danger of injuring the stomach, or other parts of the system, by such a variety of doses, many of which, it is probable, will be directly contradictory in their nature, and thus neutralize any supposed benefit they might separately impart. Habit [Q] It is very unwise, to tempt the appetite of a person who is indisposed. The cessation of appetite is the warning of Nature, that the system is in such a state, that food cannot be digested. The following suggestions may be found useful, in regard to nursing the sick. As nothing contributes more to the restoration of health, than pure air, it should be a primary object, to keep a sick-room well ventilated. At least twice in the twenty-four hours, the patient should be well covered, and fresh air freely admitted from out of doors. After this, if need be, the room should be restored to a proper temperature, by the aid of a fire. Bedding and clothing should also be well aired, and frequently changed; as the exhalations from the body, in sickness, are peculiarly deleterious. Frequent ablutions, of the whole body, if possible, are very useful; and for these, warm water may be employed. The following, are useful directions for dressing a blister. Spread thinly, on a linen cloth, an ointment, composed of one third of beeswax to two thirds of tallow; lay this upon a linen cloth, folded many times. With a sharp pair of scissors, make an aperture in the lower part of the bag of water, with a little hole, above, to give it vent. Break the raised skin as little as possible. Lay on the cloth, spread as directed. The blister, at first, should be dressed as often as three times in a day, and the dressing renewed each time. A sick-room should always be kept very neat, and in perfect order; and all haste, noise, and bustle, should be avoided. In order to secure neatness, order, and quiet, in case of long illness, the following arrangements should be made. Keep a large box for fuel, which will need to be filled only twice in twenty-four hours. Provide, also, and keep in the room, or an adjacent closet, a small teakettle, a saucepan, a pail of water, for drinks and ablutions, a pitcher, a covered porringer, two pint bowls, two tumblers, two cups and saucers, two wine glasses, two large and two small spoons; also, a dish in which to wash these articles; a good supply of towels, and a broom. Keep a slop-bucket, near by, to receive the wash of the room. Procuring all these articles at once, will save much noise and confusion. Whenever medicine or food is given, spread a clean towel over the person or bedclothing, and get a clean handkerchief, as nothing is more annoying to a weak stomach, than the stickiness and soiling produced by medicine and food. Keep the fireplace neat, and always wash all articles, and put them in order, as soon as they are out of use. A sick person has nothing to do, but look about the room; and when every thing is neat and in order, a feeling of comfort is induced, while disorder, filth, and neglect, are constant objects of annoyance, which, if not complained of, are yet felt. Always prepare food for the sick, in the neatest and most careful manner. It is in sickness, that the senses of smell and taste are most susceptible of annoyance; and often, little mistakes or negligences, in preparing food, will take away all appetite. Food for the sick, should be cooked on coals, that no smoke may have access to it; and great care must be taken, to prevent any adherence to the bottom, as this always gives a disagreeable taste. Keeping clean handkerchiefs and towels at hand, cooling the pillows, sponging the hands with water, swabbing the mouth with a clean linen rag, on the end of a stick, are modes of increasing the comfort of the sick. Always throw a shawl over a sick person, when raised up. Be careful to understand a physician's directions, and . If it be supposed that any other person knows better about the case, than the physician, dismiss the physician, and employ that person in his stead. to obey them implicitly In nursing the sick, always speak gently and cheeringly; and, while you express sympathy for their pain and trials, stimulate them to bear all with fortitude, and with resignation to Him who has appointed the trial. Offer to read the Bible, or other devotional books, whenever it is suitable, and will not be deemed obtrusive. It is always best to consult the physician, as to where medicines shall be purchased, and to show the articles to him before using them, as great impositions are practised in selling old, useless, and adulterated drugs. Always put labels on vials of medicine, and keep them out of the reach of children. Be careful to label all powders, and particularly all ; as many poisonous medicines, in this form, are easily mistaken for others which are harmless. white powders About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Catharine Esther Beecher (2007). A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/21829/pg21829-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

ON THE CARE OF THE SICK.

MRS. HURTLE AT LOWESTOFT

Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . "PURITY OF MORALS, FINN." here "PURITY OF MORALS, FINN." Mr. Quintus Slide was now, as formerly, the editor of the People's Banner, but a change had come over the spirit of his dream. His newspaper was still the People's Banner, and Mr. Slide still professed to protect the existing rights of the people, and to demand new rights for the people. But he did so as a Conservative. He had watched the progress of things, and had perceived that duty called upon him to be the organ of Mr. Daubeny. This duty he performed with great zeal, and with an assumption of consistency and infallibility which was charming. No doubt the somewhat difficult task of veering round without inconsistency, and without flaw to his infallibility, was eased by Mr. Daubeny's newly-declared views on Church matters. The People's Banner could still be a genuine People's Banner in reference to ecclesiastical policy. And as that was now the subject mainly discussed by the newspapers, the change made was almost entirely confined to the lauding of Mr. Daubeny instead of Mr. Turnbull. Some other slight touches were no doubt necessary. Mr. Daubeny was the head of the Conservative party in the kingdom, and though Mr. Slide himself might be of all men in the kingdom the most democratic, or even the most destructive, still it was essential that Mr. Daubeny's organ should support the Conservative party all round. It became Mr. Slide's duty to speak of men as heaven-born patriots whom he had designated a month or two since as bloated aristocrats and leeches fattened on the blood of the people. Of course remarks were made by his brethren of the press,—remarks which were intended to be very unpleasant. One evening newspaper took the trouble to divide a column of its own into double columns, printing on one side of the inserted line remarks made by the People's Banner in September respecting the Duke of ——, and the Marquis of ——, and Sir —— ——, which were certainly very harsh; and on the other side remarks equally laudatory as to the characters of the same titled politicians. But a journalist, with the tact and experience of Mr. Quintus Slide, knew his business too well to allow himself to be harassed by any such small stratagem as that. He did not pause to defend himself, but boldly attacked the meanness, the duplicity, the immorality, the grammar, the paper, the type, and the wife of the editor of the evening newspaper. In the storm of wind in which he rowed it was unnecessary for him to defend his own conduct. "And then," said he at the close of a very virulent and successful article, "the hirelings of —— dare to accuse me of inconsistency!" The readers of the People's Banner all thought that their editor had beaten his adversary out of the field. Mr. Quintus Slide was certainly well adapted for his work. He could edit his paper with a clear appreciation of the kind of matter which would best conduce to its success, and he could write telling leading articles himself. He was indefatigable, unscrupulous, and devoted to his paper. Perhaps his great value was shown most clearly in his distinct appreciation of the low line of public virtue with which his readers would be satisfied. A highly-wrought moral strain would he knew well create either disgust or ridicule. "If there is any beastliness I 'ate it is 'igh-faluting," he has been heard to say to his underlings. The sentiment was the same as that conveyed in the "Point de zèle" of Talleyrand. "Let's 'ave no d——d nonsense," he said on another occasion, when striking out from a leading article a passage in praise of the patriotism of a certain public man. "Mr. Gresham is as good as another man, no doubt; what we want to know is whether he's along with us." Mr. Gresham was not along with Mr. Slide at present, and Mr. Slide found it very easy to speak ill of Mr. Gresham. Mr. Slide one Sunday morning called at the house of Mr. Bunce in Great Marlborough Street, and asked for Phineas Finn. Mr. Slide and Mr. Bunce had an old acquaintance with each other, and the editor was not ashamed to exchange a few friendly words with the law-scrivener before he was shown up to the member of Parliament. Mr. Bunce was an outspoken, eager, and honest politician,—with very little accurate knowledge of the political conditions by which he was surrounded, but with a strong belief in the merits of his own class. He was a sober, hardworking man, and he hated all men who were not sober and hardworking. He was quite clear in his mind that all nobility should be put down, and that all property in land should be taken away from men who were enabled by such property to live in idleness. What should be done with the land when so taken away was a question which he had not yet learnt to answer. At the present moment he was accustomed to say very hard words of Mr. Slide behind his back, because of the change which had been effected in the People's Banner, and he certainly was not the man to shrink from asserting in a person's presence aught that he said in his absence. "Well, Mr. Conservative Slide," he said, stepping into the little back parlour, in which the editor was left while Mrs. Bunce went up to learn whether the member of Parliament would receive his visitor. "None of your chaff, Bunce." "We have enough of your chaff, anyhow; don't we, Mr. Slide? I still sees the Banner, Mr. Slide,—most days; just for the joke of it." "As long as you take it, Bunce, I don't care what the reason is." "I suppose a heditor's about the same as a Cabinet Minister. You've got to keep your place;—that's about it, Mr. Slide." "We've got to tell the people who's true to 'em. Do you believe that Gresham 'd ever have brought in a Bill for doing away with the Church? Never;—not if he'd been Prime Minister till doomsday. What you want is progress." "That's about it, Mr. Slide." "And where are you to get it? Did you ever hear that a rose by any other name 'd smell as sweet? If you can get progress from the Conservatives, and you want progress, why not go to the Conservatives for it? Who repealed the corn laws? Who gave us 'ousehold suffrage?" "I think I've been told all that before, Mr. Slide; them things weren't given by no manner of means, as I look at it. We just went in and took 'em. It was hall a haccident whether it was Cobden or Peel, Gladstone or Disraeli, as was the servants we employed to do our work. But Liberal is Liberal, and Conservative is Conservative. What are you, Mr. Slide, to-day?" "If you'd talk of things, Bunce, which you understand, you would not talk quite so much nonsense." At this moment Mrs. Bunce entered the room, perhaps preventing a quarrel, and offered to usher Mr. Slide up to the young member's room. Phineas had not at first been willing to receive the gentleman, remembering that when they had last met the intercourse had not been pleasant,—but he knew that enmities are foolish things, and that it did not become him to perpetuate a quarrel with such a man as Mr. Quintus Slide. "I remember him very well, Mrs. Bunce." "I know you didn't like him, Sir." "Not particularly." "No more don't I. No more don't Bunce. He's one of them as 'd say a'most anything for a plate of soup and a glass of wine. That's what Bunce says." "It won't hurt me to see him." "No, sir; it won't hurt you. It would be a pity indeed if the likes of him could hurt the likes of you." And so Mr. Quintus Slide was shown up into the room. The first greeting was very affectionate, at any rate on the part of the editor. He grasped the young member's hand, congratulated him on his seat, and began his work as though he had never been all but kicked out of that very same room by its present occupant. "Now you want to know what I'm come about; don't you?" "No doubt I shall hear in good time, Mr. Slide." "It's an important matter;—and so you'll say when you do hear. And it's one in which I don't know whether you'll be able to see your way quite clear." "I'll do my best, if it concerns me." "It does." So saying, Mr. Slide, who had seated himself in an arm-chair by the fireside opposite to Phineas, crossed his legs, folded his arms on his breast, put his head a little on one side, and sat for a few moments in silence, with his eyes fixed on his companion's face. "It does concern you, or I shouldn't be here. Do you know Mr. Kennedy,—the Right Honourable Robert Kennedy, of Loughlinter, in Scotland?" "I do know Mr. Kennedy." "And do you know Lady Laura Kennedy, his wife?" "Certainly I do." "So I supposed. And do you know the Earl of Brentford, who is, I take it, father to the lady in question?" "Of course I do. You know that I do." For there had been a time in which Phineas had been subjected to the severest censure which the People's Banner could inflict upon him, because of his adherence to Lord Brentford, and the vials of wrath had been poured out by the hands of Mr. Quintus Slide himself. "Very well. It does not signify what I know or what I don't. Those preliminary questions I have been obliged to ask as my justification for coming to you on the present occasion. Mr. Kennedy has I believe been greatly wronged." "I am not prepared to talk about Mr. Kennedy's affairs," said Phineas gravely. "But unfortunately he is prepared to talk about them. That's the rub. He has been ill-used, and he has come to the People's Banner for redress. Will you have the kindness to cast your eye down that slip?" Whereupon the editor handed to Phineas a long scrap of printed paper, amounting to about a column and a half of the People's Banner, containing a letter to the editor dated from Loughlinter, and signed Robert Kennedy at full length. "You don't mean to say that you're going to publish this," said Phineas before he had read it. "Why not?" "The man is a madman." "There's nothing in the world easier than calling a man mad. It's what we do to dogs when we want to hang them. I believe Mr. Kennedy has the management of his own property. He is not too mad for that. But just cast your eye down and read it." Phineas did cast his eye down, and read the whole letter;—nor as he read it could he bring himself to believe that the writer of it would be judged to be mad from its contents. Mr. Kennedy had told the whole story of his wrongs, and had told it well,—with piteous truthfulness, as far as he himself knew and understood the truth. The letter was almost simple in its wailing record of his own desolation. With a marvellous absence of reticence he had given the names of all persons concerned. He spoke of his wife as having been, and being, under the influence of Mr. Phineas Finn;—spoke of his own former friendship for that gentleman, who had once saved his life when he fell among thieves, and then accused Phineas of treachery in betraying that friendship. He spoke with bitter agony of the injury done him by the Earl, his wife's father, in affording a home to his wife, when her proper home was at Loughlinter. And then declared himself willing to take the sinning woman back to his bosom. "That she had sinned is certain," he said; "I do not believe she has sinned as some sin; but, whatever be her sin, it is for a man to forgive as he hopes for forgiveness." He expatiated on the absolute and almost divine right which it was intended that a husband should exercise over his wife, and quoted both the Old and New Testament in proof of his assertions. And then he went on to say that he appealed to public sympathy, through the public press, because, owing to some gross insufficiency in the laws of extradition, he could not call upon the magistracy of a foreign country to restore to him his erring wife. But he thought that public opinion, if loudly expressed, would have an effect both upon her and upon her father, which his private words could not produce. "I wonder very greatly that you should put such a letter as that into type," said Phineas when he had read it all. "Why shouldn't we put it into type?" "You don't mean to say that you'll publish it." "Why shouldn't we publish it?" "It's a private quarrel between a man and his wife. What on earth have the public got to do with that?" "Private quarrels between gentlemen and ladies have been public affairs for a long time past. You must know that very well." "When they come into court they are." "In court and out of court! The morale of our aristocracy,—what you call the Upper Ten,—would be at a low ebb indeed if the public press didn't act as their guardians. Do you think that if the Duke of —— beats his wife black and blue, nothing is to be said about it unless the Duchess brings her husband into court? Did you ever know of a separation among the Upper Ten, that wasn't handled by the press one way or the other? It's my belief that there isn't a peer among 'em all as would live with his wife constant, if it was not for the press;—only some of the very old ones, who couldn't help themselves." "And you call yourself a Conservative?" "Never mind what I call myself. That has nothing to do with what we're about now. You see that letter, Finn. There is nothing little or dirty about us. We go in for morals and purity of life, and we mean to do our duty by the public without fear or favour. Your name is mentioned there in a manner that you won't quite like, and I think I am acting uncommon kind by you in showing it to you before we publish it." Phineas, who still held the slip in his hand, sat silent thinking of the matter. He hated the man. He could not endure the feeling of being called Finn by him without showing his resentment. As regarded himself, he was thoroughly well inclined to kick Mr. Slide and his Banner into the street. But he was bound to think first of Lady Laura. Such a publication as this, which was now threatened, was the misfortune which the poor woman dreaded more than any other. He, personally, had certainly been faultless in the matter. He had never addressed a word of love to Mr. Kennedy's wife since the moment in which she had told him that she was engaged to marry the Laird of Loughlinter. Were the letter to be published he could answer it, he thought, in such a manner as to defend himself and her without damage to either. But on her behalf he was bound to prevent this publicity if it could be prevented;—and he was bound also, for her sake, to allow himself to be called Finn by this most obnoxious editor. "In the ordinary course of things, Finn, it will come out to-morrow morning," said the obnoxious editor. "Every word of it is untrue," said Phineas. "You say that, of course." "And I should at once declare myself willing to make such a statement on oath. It is a libel of the grossest kind, and of course there would be a prosecution. Both Lord Brentford and I would be driven to that." "We should be quite indifferent. Mr. Kennedy would hold us harmless. We're straightforward. My showing it to you would prove that." "What is it you want, Mr. Slide?" "Want! You don't suppose we want anything. If you think that the columns of the People's Banner are to be bought, you must have opinions respecting the press of the day which make me pity you as one grovelling in the very dust. The daily press of London is pure and immaculate. That is, the morning papers are. Want, indeed! What do you think I want?" "I have not the remotest idea." "Purity of morals, Finn;—punishment for the guilty;—defence for the innocent;—support for the weak;—safety for the oppressed;—and a rod of iron for the oppressors!" "But that is a libel." "It's very heavy on the old Earl, and upon you, and upon Lady Laura;—isn't it?" "It's a libel,—as you know. You tell me that purity of morals can be supported by such a publication as this! Had you meant to go on with it, you would hardly have shown it to me." "You're in the wrong box there, Finn. Now I'll tell you what we'll do,—on behalf of what I call real purity. We'll delay the publication if you'll undertake that the lady shall go back to her husband." "The lady is not in my hands." "She's under your influence. You were with her over at Dresden not much more than a month ago. She'd go sharp enough if you told her." "You never made a greater mistake in your life." "Say that you'll try." "I certainly will not do so." "Then it goes in to-morrow," said Mr. Quintus Slide, stretching out his hand and taking back the slip. "What on earth is your object?" "Morals! Morals! We shall be able to say that we've done our best to promote domestic virtue and secure forgiveness for an erring wife. You've no notion, Finn, in your mind of what will soon be the hextent of the duties, privileges, and hinfluences of the daily press;—the daily morning press, that is; for I look on those little evening scraps as just so much paper and ink wasted. You won't interfere, then?" "Yes, I will;—if you'll give me time. Where is Mr. Kennedy?" "What has that to do with it? Do you write over to Lady Laura and the old lord and tell them that if she'll undertake to be at Loughlinter within a month this shall be suppressed. Will you do that?" "Let me first see Mr. Kennedy." Mr. Slide thought a while over that matter. "Well," said he at last, "you can see Kennedy if you will. He came up to town four or five days ago, and he's staying at an hotel in Judd Street." "An hotel in Judd Street?" "Yes;—Macpherson's in Judd Street. I suppose he likes to keep among the Scotch. I don't think he ever goes out of the house, and he's waiting in London till this thing is published." "I will go and see him," said Phineas. "I shouldn't wonder if he murdered you;—but that's between you and him." "Just so." "And I shall hear from you?" "Yes," said Phineas, hesitating as he made the promise. "Yes, you shall hear from me." "We've got our duty to do, and we mean to do it. If we see that we can induce the lady to go back to her husband, we shall habstain from publishing, and virtue will be its own reward. I needn't tell you that such a letter as that would sell a great many copies, Finn." Then, at last, Mr. Slide arose and departed. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2006). Phineas Redux. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18640/pg18640-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

"PURITY OF MORALS, FINN."

254 Stories To Learn About Healthcare

207 Stories To Learn About Health

MY MOTHER.

This story was originally published by by . ProPublica Ryan Gabrielson One morning in September 2017, Judge Christopher Plourd opened an unusual hearing at the Imperial County Superior Courthouse, a half-hour north of the California-Mexico border. It involved three illegal drug possession cases that were unrelated to one another. Each of the cases had relied on the results of chemical field test kits used by corrections officers at nearby state prisons. The kits indicated crumbs and shreds of paper that guards found on the inmates contained heroin and amphetamine. But a state forensic laboratory later analyzed the debris utilizing a far more reliable test and found no trace of illegal drugs. The defendants were factually innocent. Rather than simply close the cases, defense attorneys asked the court to determine whether the NIK Public Safety brand field tests used in California’s prisons were too unreliable to show to grand jurors. In effect, they put on trial the evidence most commonly used to secure convictions in drug cases in the U.S. Plourd ruled in early 2018 that the test kit “does not meet a scientific admissibility standard” and therefore “does not support the grand jury indictment.” In other words, the tests were guilty. The Imperial County cases are believed to be the first time a judge blocked field tests from contributing to indictments. In the years since, defendants and inmates in multiple states have scored additional legal victories against agencies using the kits and the companies selling them. “For years, these tests have had this unjustified scientific veneer,” said Des Walsh, founder of the Roadside Drug Test Innocence Alliance, which advocates for the use of more accurate testing technology. “Finally, we believe the tide is turning with this dawning awareness of the unacceptably high rate of false positives.” In a , ProPublica documented law enforcement’s widespread use of field tests to make arrests and secure convictions despite serious flaws. No government agency regulates their use. 2016 series of stories The officers who perform the tests to make arrests on the street often have little or no training in their use. Since then, the new court rulings have contributed to a growing movement to change the way drug cases are prosecuted in America. Courts across the country have long known that field tests are error prone and require forensic laboratories to confirm the results for jury trials. However, nearly all drug convictions in the U.S. come by plea deals during initial hearings, where chemical kits are the primary evidence of guilt. Courts have overturned 131 drug convictions in the past 10 years after laboratory analysis determined the alleged drugs were legal substances, according to a database maintained by the National Registry of Exonerations. A large majority of those wrongful convictions originated in Harris County, Texas, where the crime lab analyzed its backlog of suspected drugs from closed cases and discovered the evidence in hundreds of convictions did not contain drugs. The defendants in those cases had pleaded guilty at preliminary hearings. The tests are small plastic pouches holding vials of chemicals. They’re cheap, roughly $2 apiece, and easy to use. Officers open the pouch and add the substance to be tested. The tests are designed to produce specific colors when mixed with drugs like heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine. But dozens of items, including foods and household cleaners, trigger similar reactions. During the Imperial County hearing, an executive at the Safariland Group, the nation’s largest field test manufacturer, testified the company keeps a list of more than 50 legal substances that cause positive results. Court records show chocolate sometimes turns the liquid a similar shade of green as heroin in the NIK kits. Safariland Group did not respond to a request for comment. More evidence of the tests’ inaccuracy came in October 2021, when former inmates filed a class-action lawsuit against the Massachusetts Department of Correction. The prisons used test kits on all incoming mail, including letters from attorneys. When correspondence tested positive, inmates were sometimes put in solitary confinement and lost eligibility for parole. The lawsuit alleged that the prison system’s use of field tests violated the inmates’ right to due process. Court records show that between August 2019 and August 2020, lab analysis found that 38% of the inmate mail that tested positive did not contain the alleged drug. Shortly after the inmates filed their lawsuit, Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Brian David ordered the Correction Department to immediately stop using the chemical kits until the litigation was finished. In the order, David characterized the NARK II brand kits used in Massachusetts’ prisons as “arbitrary and unlawful guesswork.” The inmates are also suing Sirchie Acquisition Co., manufacturer of the NARK II kits, and Premier Biotech, a retailer that sells them, in federal court for negligence, alleging the companies misrepresented the kits’ risk of false positives and provided inaccurate instructions to the state prisons. In September, a federal judge ruled that field test sellers can potentially be held liable for harm caused by erroneous results. Both of the lawsuits are ongoing. Sirchie did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. Sirchie, Premier Biotech and the Massachusetts Correction Department have denied the inmates’ claims in court records. Compounding field tests’ inherent flaws, police officers and prison guards rarely understand how the kits work, according to court records and interviews. During the hearing in Imperial County, multiple guards testified about the training they received on the field tests and how they described the results to grand jurors. David Eustaquio, an officer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told the court he had used the chemical kits more than 200 times during his career, according to transcripts. He said he’d never had to explain the results beyond saying the color change meant the test was positive for an illegal drug. “Do you know what the accuracy rate is for these NIK tests?” Kelly Jafine, an Imperial County deputy public defender, asked Eustaquio. “No, I do not,” he said. Jafine then asked if the prison had taught him about false positive results during training on the chemical kits. “No,” Eustaquio answered, “I was not.” Photo by on Max Fleischmann Unsplash

Roadside Drug Tests May Become Obsolete: Here's Why

রাস্তার পাশের ওষুধের পরীক্ষাগুলি অপ্রচলিত হয়ে উঠতে পারে: কেন তা এখানে

Drogentests am Straßenrand könnten obsolet werden: Hier ist der Grund

Las pruebas de detección de drogas en la carretera pueden volverse obsoletas: este es el motivo

Les tests de dépistage de drogues en bordure de route pourraient devenir obsolètes : voici pourquoi

सड़क किनारे ड्रग परीक्षण अप्रचलित हो सकते हैं: यहां जानिए क्यों

路上薬物検査は時代遅れになるかもしれない: その理由は次のとおりです

길가 약물 검사가 더 이상 쓸모 없게 될 수 있습니다: 그 이유는 다음과 같습니다.

Os testes de drogas na estrada podem se tornar obsoletos: aqui está o porquê

Yol Kenarındaki Uyuşturucu Testleri Eski Hale Gelebilir: İşte Nedeni

Thử nghiệm ma túy bên đường có thể trở nên lỗi thời: Đây là lý do tại sao

路边药物测试可能会过时：原因如下

Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Beyond the Vanishing Point - Chapter VIII: From a Drop of Water CHAPTER VIII. From a Drop of Water I  lay concealed, and Babs stood at the lattice of our cage room. I was aware that Polter had entered some vast apartment of this giant palace. A brighter light was outside; I heard voices—Polter's and another man's. I could see the distant monster shape of one. He was at first so far away that all his outline was visible. A seated man, in a huge white room. I thought there were great shelves with enormous bottles. The spread of table tops passed under our cage as Polter walked by them. They held a litter of apparatus, and there was the smell of chemicals in the air. It seemed that this was a laboratory. The man stood up to greet Polter. I had a glimpse of his head and shoulders level with us. He wore a white linen coat, open, soft collar and black tie. He seemed an old man, queerly old, with snow-white hair.... I had an instant of whirling, confused impressions. Something was familiar about his face. It was seamed and wrinkled with lines of age and care. There were gentle blue eyes. Then all I could see was the vast spread of his white shirt and coat, a black splotch of his tie outside our bars as Polter faced him. Babs gave a low cry. "Why—why—dear God—" And then I knew! And Polter's words were not needed, though I heard their rumble. "I am back again, Kent. Are you still rebellious? You haf still determined to compound no more of our drugs? You would rather I killed you? Then see what I haf here. This little cage, someone—" It was Dr. Kent, a prisoner here all these years! Babs turned her white face toward me. "George, it's father! He's alive! Here!" "Quiet, Babs! Don't let them know I'm here. Remember!" The old man recognized her. "Babs!" It was an agonized cry. The blur of him was gone as he sank down into his chair. Polter continued standing. I could envisage his sardonic grin. Babs was calling: "Father, dear! Father!" From over us came Polter's rumble. "She iss glad to see you, Kent. I haf her here, safe. You always knew I would nefer be satisfied until I had my little Babs? Well, now I haf her. Can you hear me?" A sudden desperate calmness fell on Babs. She called evenly, "Yes, I hear you. Father, do not anger him. Do not rebel; do what he commands. Dr. Polter, will you let me be with my father? After all these years, let me be with him, just for a little while. In his size—normal." "Hah! My Babs iss scheming." "No! I want to talk to him, after so long. These years when I thought he was dead." "Scheming. You think, my little Babs, that he has the drugs? I am not so much a fool. He makes them. He can do that, and the last secret reactions only he can perform. He iss stubborn. Never would he tell me that one reaction. But he makes no drugs complete, only when I am here." "No, Dr. Polter! I want only to be with him." The old man's broken voice floated up to us. "You will not harm her, Polter?" "No. Fear nothing. But you no longer rebel?" "I will do what you tell me." The tones carried hopeless resignation, years of being beaten down, rebelling—but now this last blow vanquished him. Then he spoke again, with a sudden strange fire. "Even for the life of my daughter, I will not make your drugs, Polter, if you mean to harm our Earth." The golden cage room swooped as Polter sat down. "Hah! Now we bargain. What do you care what I do to your world? You never will see it again. I can lie to you. My plans—" "I do care." "Well, I will tell you, Kent. I am good natured now. Why should I not be, with my dear little Babs? I tell you. I am done with the Earth world. It iss so much nicer here. My friends, they haf a good time always. We like this little atom realm. I am going out once more. I must hide the little piece of golden quartz so no harm will come to it." Polter was evidently in a high good humor. His voice fell to an intimate tone of comradeship; but still I could not mistake the irony of it. "You listen to me, Kent. There was a time, years ago, when we were good friends. You liked your young assistant, the hunchback Polter. Iss it not so? Then why should we quarrel now? I am gifing up the Earth world. I wanted of it only the little Babs.... You look at me so strange! You do not speak." "There is nothing to say," retorted Dr. Kent wearily. "Then you listen. I haf much gold above, in Quebec. You know that. So very simple to take it out of our atom, grow large with it, to what we call up there the size of a hundred feet. I haf a place, a room, secluded from prying eyes under a dome-roof. I become very tall, holding a piece of gold. It is large when I am a hundred feet tall. So I haf collected much gold. They think I own a mine. I haf a smelter and my gold quartz I make into ingots, refined to the standard purity. So simple, and I am a rich man. "But gold does not bring happiness, my friend Kent." He chuckled ironically at his use of the platitude. "There is more in life than the ownership of gold. You ask my plans. I haf Babs, now. I am gifing up our Earth world. The mysterious man they know as Frank Rascor will vanish. I will hide our little fragment of quartz. No one up there will even try to find it. Then I come down here, with Babs, and we will haf so nice a little government and rule this world. No more of the drugs then will be needed, Kent. When you die, let the secret die with you." Again Polter's voice turned ingratiating, even more so than before. "We will be friends, Kent. Our little Babs will lof me; why should she not? You will tell her—advise her—and we will all three be very happy." Dr. Kent said abruptly, "Then leave her with me now. That was her request, a moment ago. If you expect to treat her kindly, then why not—" "I do! I do! But not now. I cannot spare her now. I am very busy, but I must take her with me." Babs had been silent, clinging to the bars of our cage. She called: "Why? I ask you to put this cage down." "Not now, little bird." "And let me be with my father." It struck a pang through me. Babs was scheming, but not the way Polter thought. She wanted the cage put on the floor, herself out, and a chance for me to escape. I had not yet told her of my miserable stupidity in losing the vial. Polter was repeating. "No, little bird. Presently; not now. I may take you out with me, my last trip out. I want to talk with you in a normal size when I haf time." Our room swooped as he stood up. "You think over what I haf said, Kent. You get ready now to make the fresh drugs I will need to bring down all my men from the outer world. They will all be glad to come, or, if not—well, we can easily kill those who refuse. You make the drugs. I need plenty. Will you?" "Yes." "That iss good. I come back soon and gif you the catalyst for that last reaction. Will you be ready?" "Yes." The blur outside our bars swung with a dizzying whirl as Polter turned and left the room, locking its door after him with a reverberating clank. Left alone in his laboratory, Dr. Kent began his preparations for making a fresh supply of the drugs. This room, with two smaller ones adjoining, was at once his workshop and his prison. He stood at his shelves, selecting the basic chemicals. He could not complete the final compounds. The catalyst which was necessary to the final reaction would be brought to him by Polter. How long he worked there with his thoughts in a whirl at seeing Babs, he did not know. His movements were automatic; he had done all this so many times before. His mind was confused, and he was trembling from head to foot, an old, queerly, unnaturally old man now—unnerved. His shaking fingers could hardly hold the test tubes. His thoughts were flying. Babs was here, come down from the world above. It was disaster—the thing he had feared all these years. He suddenly heard a voice. "Father!" And again: "Father!" A tiny voice, down by his shoe-tops. Two small figures were there on the floor beside him. They were both panting, winded by running. They were enlarging; they had come from a smaller size. It was Alan and Glora, who had followed Polter from the boat, diminished again, and come running through the tiny crack under the metal door of the laboratory. They grew to a foot in size, down by Dr. Kent's legs. He was too unnerved; he sat in a chair while Alan swiftly told him what had happened. Babs was in the golden cage. Dr. Kent knew that; but none of them knew what had happened to me. "We must make you small, Father. We have the drugs, here with us." "Yes! Yes, Alan. How much have you? Show me. Oh, my boy, that you are here—and Babs—" "Don't you worry, we'll get away from him." Glora and Alan had almost reached Dr. Kent's size before their excited fingers could get out the vials. They took some of the diminishing drug to check their growth. Alan handed his father a black vial. "Yes, lad—" "No! Wait, Father! That's the wrong drug. This other—" Dr. Kent had opened the vial. His trembling hand spilled some of the pellets, but none of them noticed it. "Father, dear, this one." Alan held an opalescent vial. "This one." Glora said abruptly, "Listen! Is that someone coming?" They thought they heard approaching footsteps. A moment passed, but no one came into the room. "Hurry," urged Glora. "It is nothing. We wait too long." "My boy—Alan, dear, after all these years—" They were about to take the diminishing drug. From across the room there came a very queer sound. A scuttling, scratching, and the drone of wings. "Father, good God—look!" Over by the wall, a giant fly was running across the floor. It was growing larger! At Dr. Kent's feet the pellets he had dropped were crushed by his footsteps and strewn on the floor. A fly had eaten of the sweetish powder. The enlarging drug was loose! A few drops of water lay mingled with the drug on the floor. And from the water nameless hideous things were rising! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30166/30166-h/30166-h.htm#Beyond_the_Vanishing_Point . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

It All Starts From a Drop of Water 

Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Beyond the Vanishing Point - Chapter X: The Escape CHAPTER X. The Escape To Babs and me the ride in the golden cage strapped to Polter's chest as he made his escape outward into largeness was an experience awesome and frightening almost beyond conception. We heard the alarm in the palace on the island. Polter rushed to Dr. Kent's laboratory door, looked in, and in a moment banged it shut. Babs and I saw very little. We knew only that something horrible had happened; we could see only a blur with formless things in the void beneath our bars; and there were the choking fumes of chemicals surging at us. Polter rushed through the castle corridor. We heard rumbling distant shouts. "The drug is loose! The drug is loose! Monsters! Death for everyone!" The room swayed with horrible dizzying lurches as Polter ran. We clung to the lattice bars, our legs and arms entwined. There were moments when Polter leaped, or suddenly stooped, and our reeling senses all but faded. "Babs! Babs, darling, don't let go! Don't lose consciousness!" If she should be limp, here in this lurching room, her body to be flung back and forth across its confines—that would be death in a moment. I feared I could not hold her. I managed to get an arm about her waist. "Babs!" "I'm—all right, George. I can stand it. We're—he is enlarging." "Yes." I saw water far beneath us, lashed into a turmoil of foam with Polter's wading steps. There was a brief swaying vista of a toy city; starlight overhead; a lurching swaying miniature of landscape as Polter ran for the towering cliffs. Then he climbed and scrambled into the tunnel-mouth. Had he turned at that instant doubtless he would have seen the rising distant figures of Glora, Alan and Dr. Kent. But he did not see them, evidently. Nor did we. Polter spoke only very occasionally to Babs. "Hold tightly!" It was a rumbling voice from above us. He made no move to touch the cage, except that a few times the great blur of his hand came up to adjust its angle. The lurching and jolting was less violent in the tunnel. Polter's frenzy to escape was subsiding into calmness. He traversed the tunnel with a methodical swinging stride. We were aware of him climbing over the noisome litter of the dead giant's body which blocked the tunnel's further end. We heard his astonished exclamations. But evidently he did not suspect what had happened, thinking only that the stupid messenger had miscalculated his growth and been crushed. We emerged into a less dim area. Polter did not stop at the fallen giant. Nothing mattered now to him, quite evidently, save his own rapid exit with Babs from this atomic realm. His movements seemed calm, yet hurried. We realized now how different was an outward journey from the trip coming in. This was all only an inch of golden quartz! The stages upward were frequently only a matter of growth in size; the distances in this vast desert realm of golden rock always were shrinking. Polter many times stood almost motionless until the closing dwindling walls made him scramble upward into the greater space above. It may have been an hour, or less. Babs and I, from our smaller viewpoint, with the landscape so frequently blurred by distance and Polter's movements, seldom recognized where we were. But I realized that going out was far easier in every way than coming in. Easier to determine the route, since usually the diminishing caverns and gullies made the upward step obvious.... We knew when Polter scrambled up the incline ramp. It seemed impossible for us to plan anything. Would Polter make the entire trip without a stop? It seemed so. We had no drugs. Our cage was barred beyond possibility of our getting out. But even if we had had the drugs, or had our door been open, there was no escape. An abyss of distance was always yawning beyond our lattice—the sheer precipice of Polter's body from his chest to the ground. "Babs, we must make him stop. If he sits down to rest, you might get him to take you out. I must reach his drugs." "Yes. I'll try it, George." Polter was momentarily standing motionless as though gazing around him, judging what to do next. His size seemed stationary. Beyond our bars we could see the distant circular walls as though this were some giant crater-pit in which Polter was standing. Then I thought I recognized it—the round, nearly vertical pit into which Alan had plunged his hand and arm. Above us then was a gully, blind at one end. And above that, the outer surface, the summit of the fragment of golden quartz. "Babs! I know where we are! If he takes you out, keep his attention. I'll try and get one of his black vials. Make him hold you near the ground. If I see you there, in position where you can jump, I'll startle him. Oh, Babs, dear, it's desperately dangerous but I can't think of anything else. Jump! Get away from here. I'll keep his attention on me. Then I'll join you if I can—with the drug." Polter was moving. We had no time to say more. "Yes! Yes, I'll try it, George." For just an instant she clung to me with her soft arms about my neck. Our love was sweeping us in this desperate moment, and it seemed that above us was a remote Earth world holding the promise of all our dreams. Or were we star-crossed, doomed like the realm of the atom? Was this swift embrace now marking the end of everything for us? Babs called, "Dr. Polter?" We could feel his movements stopping. "Yes? You are all right, Babs?" She laughed—a ripple of silvery laughter—but there was tragic fear in her eyes as she held her gaze on me. "Yes, Dr. Polter, but breathless. Almost dead, but not quite. What happened? I want to come out and talk to you." "Not now, little bird." "But I want to." To me it was a miracle that she could call so lightly and hold that note of lugubrious laughter in her voice. "I am hungry. Don't you think of that? And frightened. Take me out." He was sitting down! "You remind me that I am tired, Babs. And hungry, also. I haf a little food. You shall come out for just a short time." "Thank you. Take me carefully." Our tilted cage was near the ground as he seated himself. But still it was too far for me to jump. I murmured, "Babs—" "Wait, George! I'll fix that. You hide! If he looks in he'll see you, where you are now!" I scrambled back to my hiding place. Polter's huge fingers were fumbling at our bars. The little door sprang open. "Come, Babs." He held the cupped bowl of his palm to the doorway. "Come out." "No!" she called. "It is too far down!" "Come. That iss foolish." "No! I'm afraid. Put the cage on the ground." "Babs!" His finger and thumb came reaching in to seize her, but she avoided them. "Dr. Polter! Don't! You'll crush me!" "Then come out on my hand." He seemed annoyed. I had scrambled back to the doorway; I knew he could not see me so long as the cage remained strapped to his shirt front. I whispered, "I can make it, Babs!" Polter was apparently on one elbow, half turned on his side. From our cage, the sloping gleaming white surface of his stiff glossy shirt-bosom went down a steep incline. His belt was down there, and the outward bulging curve of his lap—a spreading surface where I could land like a scuttling insect, unobserved, if only Babs could hold his attention. I whispered vehemently. "Try it! Go out! Leave me! Keep talking to him!" She called instantly, "Very well, then. Bring your hand! Closer! Carefully! It seems so high up here!" She swung herself to his palm, and flung her arms about the great pillar of his upcrooked finger. The bowl of his hand moved slowly away. I heard her calling voice, and his overhead rumble. I chanced it! I could not determine the exact position, or which way he was looking. Again I heard Bab's voice. "Careful, Dr. Polter. Don't let me fall!" "Yes, little bird." I let myself down from the tilted doorway, hung by my hands and dropped. I struck the ramp-like yielding surface of his shirt-bosom. I slid, tumbling, scrambling, and landed softly in the huge folds of his trouser fabric. I was unhurt. The width of his belt, high as my body, was near me. I shrank against it; I found I could cling to its upper edge. My hold came just in time. He shifted, and sat up. I was lifted with a swoop of movement. When it steadied I saw above me the top of his knee. His left leg was crooked, the foot drawn close to him. Babs was perched up there on the knee summit. His right leg was outstretched. I was at the right side of his belt. I could dart off along that curving expanse of his leg and leap to the ground. If he would hold this position! One of the pouches of his belt was near me. The vial in it was black. The enlarging drug! I moved toward it. But Babs was too high to jump from that summit of his crooked knee! I think she saw me at his belt. I heard her voice. "I cannot eat up here. It is too high. Oh, please be careful how you move! I am so dizzy, so frightened! You move with such great jerks!" He had what seemed a huge surface of bread and meat. He was breaking o£f crumbs to put before her. I reached the pouch of his belt. The vial was as long as my body. I tugged to try and lift it out. All the giant contours of Polter's body shifted as he cautiously moved. I clung. I saw that Babs was being held gently between his thumb and forefinger. He lowered her to the ground, and she stood beside the bread and meat he had placed there. And she had the courage to laugh! "Why this—this is an enormous sandwich! You will have to break it." He was leaning over her, half turned on his left side. The vial came free. I shoved it; but I could not control its weight. I pushed desperately. It slid over the round brink of his right hip, and fell behind him. I heard the tinkling thud of it down on the rocks. There was no alarm. I could not chance leaping from his hip. I scurried along the convex top of his outstretched leg, and beyond his knee I jumped. I landed safely. I could see the black vial back across the broken rock surface, with the bulge of Polter's hip above it. I ran back and reached the vial; tugged at its huge stopper. The cork began to yield under my panting, desperate efforts. In a moment I would have a pellet of the enlarging drug; make away with it; startle Polter so that Babs might dart off and escape. The huge stopper of the vial was larger than my head. It came suddenly out. I flung it away, plunged in my hand, and seized an enormous round pellet. Then abruptly the alarm came, and I had not caused it! Polter ripped out a startled, rumbling curse and sat upright. Under the curve of his leg, I saw that Babs had been momentarily neglected. She was running. Across the boulder-strewn plain, two tiny men had appeared. Polter had seen them. They were the enlarging figures of Dr. Kent and Alan! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30166/30166-h/30166-h.htm#Beyond_the_Vanishing_Point . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Escaping the Golden Cage, Strapped to Polter's Chest 

সোনার খাঁচা থেকে পালানো, পোল্টারের বুকে বাঁধা

Entkommen aus dem Goldenen Käfig, an Polters Brust geschnallt

폴터의 가슴에 묶인 황금 우리에서 탈출

Polter'ın Göğsüne Bağlı Altın Kafesten Kaçış

Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Beyond the Vanishing Point - Chapter VI: The Girl in the Golden Cage CHAPTER VI. The Girl in the Golden Cage "y world," Glora was saying. "You like it? See the starlight on the lake? I have heard that your world looks like this at night, in summer. Ours is always like this. No day, no night. Just like this—starlight." Her hand went to Alan's shoulder. "You like it? My world?" "Yes. Yes, Glora, It's beautiful." There seemed a sheen on everything, a soft, glowing sheen of phosphorescence from the rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight. The night air was soft, with a gentle breeze that rippled the distant lake into a great spread of gold and silver light. The city was called Orena. I saw at once that we were about normal size to its houses and people. There were fields beneath our ledge, with farm implements lying in them; no workers, for this was the time for sleep. Ribbons of roads wound over the country, pale streamers in the starlight. Glora gestured. "The giants are on their island. Everyone sleeps now. You see the island off there?" Beyond the city, over the low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out like a balloon-parachute by the wind. "The giants live, there?" said Alan. "You mean Polter's men?" "And women. Yes." "Are there many giants?" "No." "How many?" I put in. "How large are they? In relation to us now, I mean. And to your normal size?" I turned to Alan. "Polter and Babs must be down there now! They must have arrived only recently. But we must determine what size to be before we go any further. We can't be gigantic If he sees us—if we assailed him—well, he'd kill Babs. We're got to plan. Glora tell us—" "You ask so many questions so fast, George. There are two hundred or more of the giants. And there are more than that many thousands of our people here. Slaves, because the giants are four times as large. This little city, these fields, these hills of stone and metal, all this was ours to have in peace and happiness—until your Polter came. And that starlight on the water—" She gestured. "Everywhere is a great reach of desert and forests. Insects, but there are no wild beasts—nothing to harm us. Nature is kind here. The weather is always like this. We were happy—until Polter came." "And only a few thousand people," Alan said. "No other cities?" "What lies off in the great distance we do not know. Our nation is ten times what is here. A few other cities, though some of our people live in the forests—" She broke off. "That boat is coming for Polter. He is in the city, no doubt of that. The boat will take him and that girl you call Babs to the giant's island. His castle is there." If we could get on that boat and go with him to the island—! But in what size? Very small? But then, if we were very small it would take us hours to get from here to the boat. Glora pointed out where it would land—just beyond the village where the houses were set in a sparse fringe. It would be there, apparently, in ten or fifteen minutes. Polter was probably there now with Babs, waiting for it. In our present size we could not get there in time. It was two or three miles at least. But a trifle larger—the size of one of Polter's giants—would enable us to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might only be mistaken for Polter's people. And when we got closer we would diminish our size, creep into the boat, get near Babs and Polter and then plan what to do. Futile plans! All of life is so futile, so wind-swept upon the tossing sea of chance! We climbed down from the ledge and stood at the base of the towering cliff which reared its jagged wall against the stars. A field and a road were near us. The road seemed of normal size. A man was across the field. He did not seem to notice us. He was apparently about my height. He presently discarded his work, went away from us and vanished. "Hurry, Glora." Alan and I stood beside her while she took pellets from her vials. It needed a careful adjustment. We wanted our stature now to be four times what it was. Glora gave us pellets of both drugs, one of which was slightly more intense than the other. "Polter made them this way," she said. "The two at once gives just the growth to take us from this normal size to the stature of the giants." Alan and I did not touch our own vials. We had used none of our enlarging drug upon the journey; the supply she had given us of the other was nearly gone. As I took these pellets which Glora now gave us, standing there by the side of that road, I recall that I was struck with the realization that never once upon this journey had I conceived myself to be other than normal stature. I am normally about six feet tall. I still felt—there in that golden atom—the same height. This landscape seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby—spreading, fantastic looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But still, as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms—whatever the size of the tree, my consciousness could only conceive myself as of a normal six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always is supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the entire universe revolves! We crouched on the ground when this growth now began; it would not do to be observed changing size. Polter's giants never did that. Years before, he had made them large—his few hundred men and women. They were, Glora said, people both of this realm and from our great world above—dissolute, criminal characters who now had set themselves up here as the nucleus of a ruling race. In a moment now, we were the size of these giants. Twenty to twenty-five feet tall, in relation to this environment. But I did not feel so. As I stood up—still myself in normal stature—I saw around me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth level path: the little field near us a toy fence around it. In another road across it, the man was walking. In height he would barely have reached my knees. He saw us rise beside the trees. He darted off his road in alarm, and disappeared. I have taken longer to tell all this than the actual time which passed. We could see the boat coming from the island, and it was still a fair distance off shore. We ran along the road, skirting the edge of the little town. Its houses were none of them taller than ourselves. The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have inserted a head or an arm. They were most of them dark. Little people occasionally stared out, saw us run past, and ducked back, thankful that we did not stop to harass them. "This way," said Glora. She ran like a fawn, hardly winded, with Alan and me heavily panting behind her. "There are trees—thick trees—quite near where the boat lands. We can get in them and hide and change our size to smallness. But hurry, for we will need so much time when we are small!" The little spread of town and the shining lake remained always to our right. In five minutes we were past most of the houses. A patch of woods, with thick interlacing treetops about our own height, lay ahead. It extended a few hundred feet over to the lake shore. The sailboat was heading in close. There was a broad, starlit roadway at the edge of the lake, and a dock there at which the boat was preparing to land. Would we be in time? I suddenly feared not. To get small now, with distance lengthening between us and the boat, would be disastrous. And where was Polter? Abruptly we saw him. There had been only little people visible to us; none of our own height. The lake roadway by the dock was brightly starlit. As we approached the intervening patch of woods it seemed that a crowd of little people were near the dock. Polter must have been sitting. But now he rose up. We could not mistake his hunched thick figure, the lump on his shoulders clear in the starlight with the gleaming lake as a background. The crowd of little figures were milling around his knees. In the silence of the night the murmur of their voices floated over to us. "There he is!" Alan gasped. We all three checked our running; we were at the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! Let's get larger! Rush him! Why that's only a few hundred feet over there!" But Babs? Where was Babs? "Alan! Down!" I crouched, pulling Alan and Glora with me. "Don't let him see us! He'd know at once—and where is Babs? Can't rush him, Alan. He'd see us coming—kill her—" Of all the strange events which had been flung at us, I think this sudden crisis now most confused Alan and me. To get larger, or smaller? Which? Yet something must be done at once. Glora said, "We can get through the woods best in this size. And not be seen—get closer to the landing." We crouched so that the little treetops were always well over us. The patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were at our shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of the crowd grew louder. Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear view of the strange scene now directly before us. And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, barge-like open sailboat was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng of people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd milled almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery. Across the road by the dock. Polter stood with the crowd down around his knees. In height he seemed the old fa miliar Polter. Bareheaded, with his shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth fashion: narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed—the change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an abnormality. A man old before his time; or younger than he should have been for the years he had lived. An indescribable mingling of something. The mingling, of the two worlds, perhaps. It marked him with a look at once unnatural and sinister. These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the white chest of his shirt, something is there." Polter was coatless, with snowy white shirt and cuffs to his thick wrists. He was no more than fifty feet from us. On his shirt bosom something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there with a band about his chest, a cord like a necklace chain up to his thick hunched neck, and other chains down to his belt. I stared at it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his shirt-front—a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars. I heard Alan murmuring, "A cage! Why George, it's—" And then, simultaneously, realization struck me. It was a golden cage strapped there. And I seemed to see that there was something in it. A tiny figure? Babs! "I think he has her there," Glora murmured. "You see the little box with bars? The girl Babs, a prisoner in there." She spoke swiftly, vehemently. "He will take the boat to the island." She suddenly gripped us. "You think really it best to go? I do what you say. I had the wish to get to my father with these drugs." "No!" exclaimed Alan. "We must keep close to Polter!" We were ready with our pellets. But a sudden activity in the road made us pause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen hostility. They milled about him as he stood there, gazing down at then sardonically. And abruptly he shouted at them in English. "You speak my language, some of you. Then listen." The crowd fell silent. "Listen. This iss your future Queen. Can you see her? She iss small now. But she has the magic power. Soon, she will be large. Like me." The crowd was shouting again. It surged forward, but it lacked a leader, and those in advance shoved backward in fear. Polter spoke again. "This girl from my world, you will like her. She iss kind and very beautiful. When she iss large, you will see how beautiful." A little stone suddenly came up from the throng of little people and struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. The crowd, emboldened, made a rush; surged against his legs. He shouted, "You do that? Why how dare you? I show to you what giants do when you make dem angry!" From down by his knees he plucked the small figure of a man. The crowd scattered with shouts of terror. Polter had the struggling eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around his head like a nine-pin and flung it over the canopy of the dock far out into the shimmering lake! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30166/30166-h/30166-h.htm#Beyond_the_Vanishing_Point . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The Girl in the Golden Cage 

Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Beyond the Vanishing Point - Chapter IV: The Journey Into Smallness CHAPTER IV. The Journey Into Smallness "Glora, that—that was horrible." We stood, again in normal size, with the wrecked dome-laboratory around us. The dome had a great jagged hole halfway up one of its sides, through which the snow was falling. The broken bodies strewn around were gruesome. Alan repeated, "Horrible, Glora. This drug, the power of it, is diabolical." Glora had grown large after us; had given us the companion drug. I need not detail the strange sensations of our dwindling. We were so soon to experience them again! We had searched, when still large, all of Polter's grounds. Some of his men undoubtedly escaped, made off into the blizzard. How many, we never knew. None of them ever made themselves known again. We were ready to start into the atom. The fragment of golden quartz still lay under the microscope on the white square of stone slab. We had hurried with our last preparations. The room was chilling. We were all inadequately dressed for such cold. I left a note scribbled on a square of paper by the microscope. With daylight, Polter's wrecked place would be discovered. The police would come. "Guard this piece of golden quartz. Take it at once, very carefully, to the Royal Canadian Scientific Society. Have it watched day and night. We will return." I signed it George Randolph. And as I did so, the extraordinary aspect of these events swept me anew. Here in Polter's weird place I had seemed living in some strange fantastic realm. But this was the Province of Quebec, in civilized Canada. These were the Quebec authorities I was addressing. I flung the thoughts away. "Ready, Glora?" "Yes." Then doubts assailed me. None of Polter's men had gotten large to fight us. Evidently he did not trust them with the drug. We could well believe that, for the thing, misused, was diabolical beyond human conception. A single giant, a criminal, a madman, by the power of giant size alone, could devastate the earth! The drug, lost, or carelessly handled, could get loose. Animals, insects, eating it, could roam the earth, gigantic monsters! Vegetation, nourished with it, might in a day overrun a great city, burying it with a jungle growth! How terrible a thing, if the realm of smallness were suddenly to emerge! Monsters of the sea, marine organisms, could expand until even the ocean was too small for them. Microbes of disease, feeding upon this drug— Alan was gripping me. "We're ready, George." "Yes. Yes, I'm ready." This was not largeness we were facing now, but smallness. I thought of Babs, down there with Polter, beyond the vanishing point in the realm of the infinitely small. They had been gone an hour at least. Every moment lost now was adding to Bab's danger. "Yes. I'm ready, Alan." Glora sat with us on the platform. Strange little creature! She was wholly calm now; methodical with her last directions. There had been no time for her to tell us anything about herself. Alan had asked her why she had come here and how she had gotten the drugs. She waved him away: "On the journey down. Plenty of time, then." "How long?" Alan demanded. "Not too long. If we are careful with managing the trip, what you might call ten hours." And now as we were ready to start, she told us calmly: "I will give you each your share of the drugs, but them you take only as I tell you." She produced from her robe several small vials a few inches long. They were tightly stoppered. The feel of them was cool and sleek; they seemed of some strange, polished metal. Some of them were tinted black while the others glowed opalescent. She gave each of us one vial of each kind. "The light ones are for diminishing," she said. "We take them very carefully, one small pellet only at first." Alan was opening one of his, but she checked him. "Wait! The drug evaporates very quickly. I have more to say, first. We sit here together. Then you follow me to the white slab. We climb upon the little rock." She laid her hands on our arms. Her blue eyes regarded us earnestly. Her manner was naive; childlike. But I could not mistake her intelligence; the force of character stamped on her face for all its dainty, ethereal beauty. "Alan—" She smiled at him, and tossed back a straying lock of her hair which was annoying her. "You pay attention, Alan. You are very young, reckless. You listen. We must not be separated. You understand that, both of you? We will be always in that little piece of rock. But there will be miles of distance. And to be lost in size—" Strange journey upon which now we were starting! Lost in size? "You understand me? Lost in size. If that happens, we might never find each other. And if we come upon the Doctor Polter and the girl he holds captive—if we can overtake them—" "We must!" I exclaimed. "And we must start, Glora!" "Yes. Now!" She showed us which pellet to select. They were of several sizes, I found. And as she afterward told us, the larger ones were not only larger but of an intensified strength. We took the smallest. It was barely a thousandth part of the strength of the largest. In unison we placed the pellets on our tongues, and hastily swallowed. The first sensations were as before. And, familiar now, they caused no more than a fleeting discomfort. But I think I could never get used to the outward strangeness! The room in a moment was expanding. I could feel the platform floor crawling outward beneath me, so that I had to hitch and change my position as it pulled. We were seated together, Alan and I on each side of Glora. My fingers were on her arm. It did not change size, but it slowly drew away with a space opening between us. Overhead, the dome-roof, the great jagged hole there, was receding, lifting, moving upward and away. Glora pulled us to our feet. "We had better start now. The distance is so far, so quickly." We had been sitting within five feet of the stone slab with its little four-inch-high railing around it. A chair was by the microscope eyepiece. As we stood swaying I saw that the chair was huge, and its seat level with my head. The great barrel-cylinder of the microscope slanted sixty feet upward. The dome-roof was a distant spread three hundred feet up in the dimness. This gigantic room! It was a vast arena now. Alan and I must have hesitated, confused by the expanding scene—a slow steady movement everywhere. Everything was drawing away from us. Even as we stood together, the creeping platform floor was separating us. A moment passed. Glora was urging vehemently: "Come! You must not stand!" We started walking. The railing around the slab was knee-high. The slab itself was a broad square surface. The fragment of golden quartz lay in its center. It was now a jagged lump nearly a foot in diameter! The platform seemed shifting as we walked; the railing hardly came closer as we advanced toward it. Then suddenly I realized it was receding. Thirty feet away? No, now it was more than that—a great, thick rope, waist-high, with a huge spread of white surface behind it. "Faster!" urged Glora. We ran, and reached the railing. It was higher than our heads. We ran under it, and out upon the white slab—a level surface, larger now than the whole dome-room had been. Glora, like a fawn ran in advance of us, her draperies flying in the wind. She turned to look back. "Faster! Faster—or it will be too hard a climb!" Ahead lay a golden mound of rock. It was widening; raising its top steadily higher. Beyond it and over it was a vast dim distance. We reached the rock, breathless, winded. It was a jagged mound like a great fifty-foot butte. We plunged upon it, began climbing. The ascent was steep; precipitous in places. There were little gullies, which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed that we should never reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had ceased its action. The yellow rocky ground was no longer expanding. We came to the summit and stood to get back our breath. And Alan and I gazed with awe upon the top of a rocky hill. Little buttes and strewn boulders lay everywhere. It was all naked rock, ridged and pitted, and everywhere yellow-tinged. Overhead was distance. I could not call it a sky. A blur was there—something almost but not quite distinguishable. Then I thought that I could make out a more solid blur which might be the lower lens of the microscope above us. And there were blurred, very distant spots of light, like huge suns masked by a haze, and I knew that they were the hooded lights of the laboratory room. Before us, over the brink of a five hundred-foot cliff, a great glistening white plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our own hilltop level a horizontal streak marked the rope railing of the slab. "Well," said Alan, "we're here." He gazed behind us, back across the rocky summit which seemed several hundred feet across to its opposite brink. He was smiling, but the smile faded. "Now what, Glora? Another pellet?" "No. Not yet. There is a place where we go down. It is marked in my mind." I had a sudden ominous sense that we three were not alone up here. Glora led us back from the cliff. As we picked our way among the naked crags, it seemed behind each of them an enemy might be lurking. "Glora, do you know if any of Dr. Polter's men have the drug? I mean, do they come in and out here?" She shook her head. "I think not. He lets no one have the drug. He trusts not any one. I stole it; I will tell you later. Much I have to tell you before we arrive." Alan made a sudden sidewise leap, and dashed around a rock. He came back to us, smiling ruefully. "Gets on your nerves, all this. I had the same idea you did, George. Might be someone around here. But I guess not." He took Glora's hand and they walked in advance of me. "We haven't thanked you yet, Glora." "Not needed. I came for help from your world. I could not get back to my own, and I followed the Doctor Polter when he came outward. He has made my world, my people, his slaves. I came for help. And because I have helped you needs no thanks." "But we do thank you, Glora." Alan turned his flushed, earnest face back to me. I thought I had never seen him so handsome, with his boyish, rugged features, and shock of tousled brown hair. The grimness of adventure was upon him, but in his eyes there was something else. It was not for me to see it. That was for Glora; and I think that even then its presence and its meaning did not escape her. "Stay close, George." "Yes." We reached a little gully near the center of the hilltop. It was some twenty feet deep. Glora paused. "We descend here." The gully was an unmistakable landmark—open at one end, forty feet long, with the other end terminating in a blind wall, smoothly precipitous. We retraced our steps, entered the gully at its open end, and walked its length. Glora paused by the wall which now loomed above us. "A pit is here—a hole. I cannot tell just how large it will look when we are in this size." We found and stood over it—a foot-wide circular hole extending downward. Alan abruptly knelt and shoved his hand and arm into it, but Glora sprang at him. "Don't do that!" "Why not? Is this it? How deep is it?" She retorted sharply, "The Doctor Polter is ahead of us. How far away in size, who knows? Do you want to crush him, and crush that young girl with him?" Alan's jaw dropped. "Good Lord!" We stood with the little pit before us, and another of the pellets ready. "Now!" said Glora. Again we took the drug, a somewhat larger pellet this time. The familiar sensations began. Everywhere the rocks were creeping with a slow inexorable movement, the landscape expanding around us. The gully walls drew back and upward. In a moment they were precipice cliff-walls and we were in a broad valley. We had been standing close together. We had not moved except to shift our feet as the expanding ground drew them apart. I became aware that Alan and Glora were a distance from me. Glora called: "Come, George! We go down, quickly now." We ran to the pit. It had expanded to a great round hole some six feet wide and equally as deep. Glora let herself down, peered anxiously beneath her, and dropped. Alan and I followed. We jammed the pit; but as we stood there, the walls were receding and lifting. I had remarked Glora's downward glance, and shuddered. Suppose, in some slightly smaller size, Babs had been here among these rocks! The pit widened steadily. The movement was far swifter now. We stood presently in a great circular valley. It seemed fully a mile in diameter, with huge encircling walls like a crater rim towering thousands of feet into the air. We ran along the base of one expanding wall, following Glora. I noticed now that overhead the turgid murk had turned into the blue of distance. A sky. It was faintly sky-blue, and there seemed a haze in it, almost as though clouds were forming. It had been cold when we started. The exertion had kept us fairly comfortable; but now I realized that the air was far warmer. It was a different air, more humid, and I thought the smell of moist earth was in it. Rocks and boulders were strewn here on the floor of this giant valley, and I saw occasional pools of water. There had been rain recently! The realization came with a shock of surprise. This was a new world! A faint, luminous twilight was around us. And then I noticed that the light was not altogether coming from overhead. It seemed inherent to the rocks themselves. They glowed very faintly luminous, as though phosphorescent. We were now well embarked upon this strange journey. We spoke seldom. Glora was intent upon guiding us. She was trying to make the best possible speed. I realized that it was a case of judgment, as well as physical haste. We had dropped into that six-foot pit. Had we waited a few moments longer, the depth would have been a hundred feet, two hundred, a thousand! It would have involved hours of arduous descent—if we had lingered until we were a trifle smaller! We took other pellets. We traveled perhaps an hour more. There were many instances of Glora's skill. We squeezed into a gully and waited until it widened; we leaped little expanding caverns; we slid down a smooth yellowish slide of rock like a child's toboggan, and saw it behind and over us, rising to become a great spreading ramp extending upward into the blue of the sky. Now, up there, little sailing white clouds were visible. And down where we stood it was deep twilight, queerly silvery with the phosphorescence from the luminous rocks as though some hidden moon were shining. Strange, new world! I suddenly envisaged the full strangeness of it. Around me were spreading miles of barren, naked landscape. I gazed off to where, across the rugged plateau we were traversing, there was a range of hills. Behind and above them were mountains; serrated tiers, higher and more distant. An infinite spread of landscape! And, as we dwindled, still other vast reaches opened before us. I gazed overhead. Was it—compared to my stature now—a thousand miles, perhaps even a million miles up to where we had been two or three hours ago? I think so. Then suddenly I caught the other viewpoint. This was all only an inch of golden quartz—if one were large enough to see it that way! Alan had been trying to memorize the main topographical features of our route. It was not as difficult as it seemed at first. We were always far larger than normal to our environment. The main distinguishing characteristics of the landscape were obvious—the blind gully, with the round pit, for instance, or the ramp-slide. We had been traveling some three or four hours when Glora suggested a rest. We were at the side-wall of a broad canyon. The wall towered several hundred feet above us; but a few moments before we had jumped down it with a single leap! The drug we had last taken had ceased its action. We sat down to rest. It was a wild, mountainous scene around us, deep with luminous gloom. We could barely see across the canyon to its distant cliff-wall. The wall beside us had been smooth, but now it was broken and ridged. There were ravines in it, and dark holes like cave-mouths. One was near us. Alan gazed at it apprehensively. "I say, Glora. I don't like sitting here." I had been telling her all we knew of Polter. She listened quietly, seldom interrupting me. Then she said: "I understand. I tell you now about Polter as I have seen him." She talked for five or ten minutes. I listened amazed, awed by what she told. But Alan suddenly interrupted her. "I say, let's move away from here. That tunnel-mouth, or cave, whatever it is—" "But we go in there," she protested. "A little tunnel. That is our way to travel. We are not far from my city now." Perhaps Alan felt what a generation ago they called a hunch, a premonition, the presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred feet away. It was a ten-foot, black yawning hole in the cliff. Perhaps Alan sensed a movement off there. As I turned to gaze, from the opening came a great hairy human arm! Then a shoulder! A head! The giant figure of a man came squeezing through the hole on his hands and knees! He gathered himself, and as he stood erect, I saw that he was growing in size! Already he was twenty feet tall compared to us—a thick-set fellow, dressed in leather garments, his legs and bare arms heavily matted with black hair. He stood swaying, gazing around him. I stared up at his round bullet head, his villainous face. He saw us! Stupid amazement struck him, then comprehension. He let out a roar and came at us! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30166/30166-h/30166-h.htm#Beyond_the_Vanishing_Point . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The Journey Into Smallness

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE EIDER-DOWN HUNTER—OFF AT LAST here CHAPTER VIII - THE EIDER-DOWN HUNTER—OFF AT LAST That evening I took a brief walk on the shore near Reykjavik, after which I returned to an early sleep on my bed of coarse planks, where I slept the sleep of the just. When I awoke I heard my uncle speaking loudly in the next room. I rose hastily and joined him. He was talking in Danish with a man of tall stature, and of perfectly Herculean build. This man appeared to be possessed of very great strength. His eyes, which started rather prominently from a very large head, the face belonging to which was simple and naive, appeared very quick and intelligent. Very long hair, which even in England would have been accounted exceedingly red, fell over his athletic shoulders. This native of Iceland was active and supple in appearance, though he scarcely moved his arms, being in fact one of those men who despise the habit of gesticulation common to southern people. Everything in this man's manner revealed a calm and phlegmatic temperament. There was nothing indolent about him, but his appearance spoke of tranquillity. He was one of those who never seemed to expect anything from anybody, who liked to work when he thought proper, and whose philosophy nothing could astonish or trouble. I began to comprehend his character, simply from the way in which he listened to the wild and impassioned verbiage of my worthy uncle. While the excellent Professor spoke sentence after sentence, he stood with folded arms, utterly still, motionless to all my uncle's gesticulations. When he wanted to say No he moved his head from left to right; when he acquiesced he nodded, so slightly that you could scarcely see the undulation of his head. This economy of motion was carried to the length of avarice. Judging from his appearance I should have been a long time before I had suspected him to be what he was, a mighty hunter. Certainly his manner was not likely to frighten the game. How, then, did he contrive to get at his prey? My surprise was slightly modified when I knew that this tranquil and solemn personage was only a hunter of the eider duck, the down of which is, after all, the greatest source of the Icelanders' wealth. In the early days of summer, the female of the eider, a pretty sort of duck, builds its nest amid the rocks of the fjords—the name given to all narrow gulfs in Scandinavian countries—with which every part of the island is indented. No sooner has the eider duck made her nest than she lines the inside of it with the softest down from her breast. Then comes the hunter or trader, taking away the nest, the poor bereaved female begins her task over again, and this continues as long as any eider down is to be found. When she can find no more the male bird sets to work to see what he can do. As, however, his down is not so soft, and has therefore no commercial value, the hunter does not take the trouble to rob him of his nest lining. The nest is accordingly finished, the eggs are laid, the little ones are born, and next year the harvest of eider down is again collected. Now, as the eider duck never selects steep rocks or aspects to build its nest, but rather sloping and low cliffs near to the sea, the Icelandic hunter can carry on his trade operations without much difficulty. He is like a farmer who has neither to plow, to sow, nor to harrow, only to collect his harvest. This grave, sententious, silent person, as phlegmatic as an Englishman on the French stage, was named Hans Bjelke. He had called upon us in consequence of the recommendation of M. Fridriksson. He was, in fact, our future guide. It struck me that had I sought the world over, I could not have found a greater contradiction to my impulsive uncle. They, however, readily understood one another. Neither of them had any thought about money; one was ready to take all that was offered him, the other ready to offer anything that was asked. It may readily be conceived, then, that an understanding was soon come to between them. Now, the understanding was, that he was to take us to the village of Stapi, situated on the southern slope of the peninsula of Sneffels, at the very foot of the volcano. Hans, the guide, told us the distance was about twenty-two miles, a journey which my uncle supposed would take about two days. But when my uncle came to understand that they were Danish miles, of eight thousand yards each, he was obliged to be more moderate in his ideas, and, considering the horrible roads we had to follow, to allow eight or ten days for the journey. Four horses were prepared for us, two to carry the baggage, and two to bear the important weight of myself and uncle. Hans declared that nothing ever would make him climb on the back of any animal. He knew every inch of that part of the coast, and promised to take us the very shortest way. His engagement with my uncle was by no means to cease with our arrival at Stapi; he was further to remain in his service during the whole time required for the completion of his scientific investigations, at the fixed salary of three rix-dollars a week, being exactly fourteen shillings and twopence, minus one farthing, English currency. One stipulation, however, was made by the guide—the money was to be paid to him every Saturday night, failing which, his engagement was at an end. The day of our departure was fixed. My uncle wished to hand the eider-down hunter an advance, but he refused in one emphatic word— "Efter." Which being translated from Icelandic into plain English means—"After." The treaty concluded, our worthy guide retired without another word. "A splendid fellow," said my uncle; "only he little suspects the marvelous part he is about to play in the history of the world." "You mean, then," I cried in amazement, "that he should accompany us?" "To the interior of the earth, yes," replied my uncle. "Why not?" There were yet forty-eight hours to elapse before we made our final start. To my great regret, our whole time was taken up in making preparations for our journey. All our industry and ability were devoted to packing every object in the most advantageous manner—the instruments on one side, the arms on the other, the tools here and the provisions there. There were, in fact, four distinct groups. The instruments were of course of the best manufacture: A centigrade thermometer of Eigel, counting up to 150 degrees, which to me did not appear half enough—or too much. Too hot by half, if the degree of heat was to ascend so high—in which case we should certainly be cooked—not enough, if we wanted to ascertain the exact temperature of springs or metal in a state of fusion. A manometer worked by compressed air, an instrument used to ascertain the upper atmospheric pressure on the level of the ocean. Perhaps a common barometer would not have done as well, the atmospheric pressure being likely to increase in proportion as we descended below the surface of the earth. A first-class chronometer made by Boissonnas, of Geneva, set at the meridian of Hamburg, from which Germans calculate, as the English do from Greenwich, and the French from Paris. Two compasses, one for horizontal guidance, the other to ascertain the dip. A night glass. Two Ruhmkorff coils, which, by means of a current of electricity, would ensure us a very excellent, easily carried, and certain means of obtaining light. A voltaic battery on the newest principle.[1] [1]Thermometer (thermos, and metron, measure); an instrument for measuring the temperature of the air.—Manometer (manos,and metron, measure); an instrument to show the density or rarity of gases.—Chronometer (chronos. time, and metros, measure) a time measurer, or superior watch—Ruhmkorff's coil, an instrument for producing currents of induced electricity of great intensity. It consists of a coil of copper wire, insulated by being covered with silk, surrounded by another coil of fine wire, also insulated, in which a momentary current is induced when a current is passed through the inner coil from a voltaic battery. When the apparatus is in action, the gas becomes luminous, and produces a white and continued light. The battery and wire are carried in a leather bag, which the traveler fastens by a strap to his shoulders. The lantern is in front, and enables the benighted wanderer to see in the most profound obscurity. He may venture without fear of explosion into the midst of the most inflammable gases, and the lantern will burn beneath the deepest waters. H. D. Ruhmkorff, an able and learned chemist, discovered the induction coil. In 1864 he won the quinquennial French prize of £2,000 for this ingenious application of electricity—A voltaic battery, so called from Volta, its designer, is an apparatus consisting of a series of metal plates arranged in pairs and subjected to the action of saline solutions for producing currents of electricity. Our arms consisted of two rifles, with two revolving six-shooters. Why these arms were provided it was impossible for me to say. I had every reason to believe that we had neither wild beasts nor savage natives to fear. My uncle, on the other hand, was quite as devoted to his arsenal as to his collection of instruments, and above all was very careful with his provision of fulminating or gun cotton, warranted to keep in any climate, and of which the expansive force was known to be greater than that of ordinary gunpowder. Our tools consisted of two pickaxes, two crowbars, a silken ladder, three iron-shod Alpine poles, a hatchet, a hammer, a dozen wedges, some pointed pieces of iron, and a quantity of strong rope. You may conceive that the whole made a tolerable parcel, especially when I mention that the ladder itself was three hundred feet long! Then there came the important question of provisions. The hamper was not very large but tolerably satisfactory, for I knew that in concentrated essence of meat and biscuit there was enough to last six months. The only liquid provided by my uncle was Schiedam. Of water, not a drop. We had, however, an ample supply of gourds, and my uncle counted on finding water, and enough to fill them, as soon as we commenced our downward journey. My remarks as to the temperature, the quality, and even as to the possibility of none being found, remained wholly without effect. To make up the exact list of our traveling gear—for the guidance of future travelers—add, that we carried a medicine and surgical chest with all apparatus necessary for wounds, fractures and blows; lint, scissors, lancets—in fact, a perfect collection of horrible looking instruments; a number of vials containing ammonia, alcohol, ether, Goulard water, aromatic vinegar, in fact, every possible and impossible drug—finally, all the materials for working the Ruhmkorff coil! My uncle had also been careful to lay in a goodly supply of tobacco, several flasks of very fine gunpowder, boxes of tinder, besides a large belt crammed full of notes and gold. Good boots rendered watertight were to be found to the number of six in the tool box. "My boy, with such clothing, with such boots, and such general equipment," said my uncle, in a state of rapturous delight, "we may hope to travel far." It took a whole day to put all these matters in order. In the evening we dined with Baron Trampe, in company with the Mayor of Reykjavik, and Doctor Hyaltalin, the great medical man of Iceland. M. Fridriksson was not present, and I was afterwards sorry to hear that he and the governor did not agree on some matters connected with the administration of the island. Unfortunately, the consequence was, that I did not understand a word that was said at dinner—a kind of semiofficial reception. One thing I can say, my uncle never left off speaking. The next day our labor came to an end. Our worthy host delighted my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, by giving him a good map of Iceland, a most important and precious document for a mineralogist. Our last evening was spent in a long conversation with M. Fridriksson, whom I liked very much—the more that I never expected to see him or anyone else again. After this agreeable way of spending an hour or so, I tried to sleep. In vain; with the exception of a few dozes, my night was miserable. At five o'clock in the morning I was awakened from the only real half hour's sleep of the night by the loud neighing of horses under my window. I hastily dressed myself and went down into the street. Hans was engaged in putting the finishing stroke to our baggage, which he did in a silent, quiet way that won my admiration, and yet he did it admirably well. My uncle wasted a great deal of breath in giving him directions, but worthy Hans took not the slightest notice of his words. At six o'clock all our preparations were completed, and M. Fridriksson shook hands heartily with us. My uncle thanked him warmly, in the Icelandic language, for his kind hospitality, speaking truly from the heart. As for myself I put together a few of my best Latin phrases and paid him the highest compliments I could. This fraternal and friendly duty performed, we sallied forth and mounted our horses. As soon as we were quite ready, M. Fridriksson advanced, and by way of farewell, called after me in the words of Virgil—words which appeared to have been made for us, travelers starting for an uncertain destination: "Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur." ("And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow!") About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2006). A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18857/18857-h/18857-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE EIDER-DOWN HUNTER—OFF AT LAST

THE SLOW POISONERS

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter XXX CHAPTER XXX (Anne’s Narrative Resumed) As soon as I got to Kimberley I wired to Suzanne. She joined me there with the utmost dispatch, heralding her arrival with telegrams sent off en route. I was awfully surprised to find that she really was fond of me—I thought I had been just a new sensation, but she positively fell on my neck and wept when we met. When we had recovered from our emotion a little, I sat down on the bed and told her the whole story from A to Z. “You always did suspect Colonel Race,” she said thoughtfully, when I had finished. “I didn’t until the night you disappeared. I liked him so much all along and thought he would make such a nice husband for you. Oh, Anne, dear, don’t be cross, but how do you know that this young man of yours is telling the truth? You believe every word he says.” “Of course I do,” I cried indignantly. “But what is there in him that attracts you so? I don’t see that there’s anything in him at all except his rather reckless good looks and his modern Sheik-cum-Stone-Age love-making.” I poured out the vials of my wrath upon Suzanne for some minutes. “Just because you’re comfortably married and getting fat, you’ve forgotten that there’s any such thing as romance,” I ended. “Oh, I’m not getting fat, Anne. All the worry I’ve had about you lately must have worn me to a shred.” “You look particularly well nourished,” I said coldly. “I should say you must have put on about half a stone.” “And I don’t know that I’m so comfortably married either,” continued Suzanne in a melancholy voice. “I’ve been having the most dreadful cables from Clarence ordering me to come home at once. At last I didn’t answer them, and now I haven’t heard for over a fortnight.” I’m afraid I didn’t take Suzanne’s matrimonial troubles very seriously. She will be able to get round Clarence all right when the times comes. I turned the conversation to the subject of the diamonds. Suzanne looked at me with a dropped jaw. “I must explain, Anne. You see, as soon as I began to suspect Colonel Race, I was terribly upset about the diamonds. I wanted to stay on at the Falls in case he might have kidnapped you somewhere close by, but didn’t know what to do about the diamonds. I was afraid to keep them in my possession——” Suzanne looked round her uneasily, as though she feared the walls might have ears, and then whispered vehemently in my ear. “A distinctly good idea,” I approved. “At the time, that is. It’s a bit awkward now. What did Sir Eustace do with the cases?” “The big ones were sent down to Cape Town. I heard from Pagett before I left the Falls, and he enclosed the receipt for their storage. He’s leaving Cape Town to-day, by the by, to join Sir Eustace in Johannesburg.” “I see,” I said thoughtfully. “And the small ones, where are they?” “I suppose Sir Eustace has got them with him.” I turned the matter over in my mind. “Well,” I said at last, “it’s awkward—but it’s safe enough. We’d better do nothing for the present.” Suzanne looked at me with a little smile. “You don’t like doing nothing, do you, Anne?” “Not very much,” I replied honestly. The one thing I could do was to get hold of a time-table and see what time Guy Pagett’s train would pass through Kimberley. I found that it would arrive at 5.40 on the following afternoon and depart again at 6. I wanted to see Pagett as soon as possible, and that seemed to me a good opportunity. The situation on the Rand was getting very serious, and it might be a long time before I got another chance. The only thing that livened up the day was a wire dispatched from Johannesburg. A most innocent-sounding telegram: “Arrived safely. All going well. Eric here, also Eustace, but not Guy. Remain where you are for the present. Andy.” Eric was our pseudonym for Race. I chose it because it is a name I dislike exceedingly. There was clearly nothing to be done until I could see Pagett. Suzanne employed herself in sending off a long soothing cable to the far-off Clarence. She became quite sentimental over him. In her way—which of course is quite different from me and Harry—she is really fond of Clarence. “I do wish he was here, Anne,” she gulped. “It’s such a long time since I’ve seen him.” “Have some face cream,” I said soothingly. Suzanne rubbed a little on the tip of her charming nose. “I shall want some more face cream soon too,” she remarked, “and you can only get this kind in Paris.” She sighed. “Paris!” “Suzanne,” I said, “very soon you’ll have had enough of South Africa and adventure.” “I should like a really nice hat,” admitted Suzanne wistfully. “Shall I come with you to meet Guy Pagett to-morrow?” “I prefer to go alone. He’d be shyer speaking before two of us.” So it came about that I was standing in the doorway of the hotel on the following afternoon, struggling with a recalcitrant parasol that refused to go up, whilst Suzanne lay peacefully on her bed with a book and a basket of fruit. According to the hotel porter, the train was on its good behaviour to-day and would be almost on time, though he was extremely doubtful whether it would ever get through to Johannesburg. The line had been blown up, so he solemnly assured me. It sounded cheerful! The train drew in just ten minutes late. Everybody tumbled out on the platform and began walking up and down feverishly. I had no difficulty in espying Pagett. I accosted him eagerly. He gave his usual nervous start at seeing me—somewhat accentuated this time. “Dear me, Miss Beddingfeld, I understood that you had disappeared.” “I have reappeared again,” I told him solemnly. “And how are you, Mr. Pagett?” “Very well, thank you—looking forward to taking up my work again with Sir Eustace.” “Mr. Pagett,” I said, “there is something I want to ask you. I hope that you won’t be offended, but a lot hangs on it, more than you can possibly guess. I want to know what you were doing at Marlow on the 8th of January last?” He started violently. “Really, Miss Beddingfeld—I—indeed——” “You were there, weren’t you?” “I—for reasons of my own I was in the neighbourhood, yes.” “Won’t you tell me what those reasons were?” “Sir Eustace has not already told you?” “Sir Eustace? Does he know?” “I am almost sure that he does. I hoped he had not recognized me, but from the hints he has let drop, and his remarks, I fear it is only too certain. In any case, I meant to make a clean breast of the matter and offer him my resignation. He is a peculiar man, Miss Beddingfeld, with an abnormal sense of humour. It seems to amuse him to keep me on tenter-hooks. All the time, I dare say, he was perfectly well aware of the true facts. Possibly he has known them for years.” I hoped that sooner or later I should be able to understand what Pagett was talking about. He went on fluently: “It is difficult for a man of Sir Eustace’s standing to put himself in my position. I know that I was in the wrong, but it seemed a harmless deception. I would have thought it better taste on his part to have tackled me outright—instead of indulging in covert jokes at my expense.” A whistle blew, and the people began to surge back into the train. “Yes, Mr. Pagett,” I broke in, “I’m sure I quite agree with all you’re saying about Sir Eustace. But why did you go to Marlow?” “It was wrong of me, but natural under the circumstances—yes, I still feel natural under the circumstances.” “What circumstances?” I cried desperately. For the first time Pagett seemed to recognize that I was asking him a question. His mind detached itself from the peculiarities of Sir Eustace and his own justification and came to rest on me. “I beg your pardon, Miss Beddingfeld,” he said stiffly, “but I fail to see your concern in the matter.” He was back in the train now, leaning down to speak to me. I felt desperate. What could one do with a man like that? “Of course, if it’s so dreadful that you’d be ashamed to speak of it to me——” I began spitefully. At last I had found the right stop. Pagett stiffened and flushed. “Dreadful? Ashamed? I don’t understand you.” “Then tell me.” In three short sentences he told me. At last I knew Pagett’s secret! It was not in the least what I expected. I walked slowly back to the hotel. There a wire was handed to me. I tore it open. It contained full and definite instructions for me to proceed forthwith to Johannesburg, or rather to a station this side of Johannesburg, where I should be met by a car. It was signed, not Andy, but Harry. I sat down in a chair to do some very serious thinking. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2020). The Man in the Brown Suit. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61168/pg61168-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

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