human
You've read it?
gpt
Yes,
human
Do you think it--possible?
gpt
I shouldn't like to say. It's possible, perhaps; but it seems extremely improbable. These doctors and scientists are always experimenting on the human body. And yet--are we any better than we were a thousand years ago?
human
I've been readin' in _The Encyclopædia Britannica_ about those--glands, he said, a little sheepishly.
gpt
It's a queer thing that I've never noticed them before. That newspaper article isn't as foolish as you think, George.
human
You misunderstood me, sir. What I said was . . .
gpt
You're too sceptical, my boy!
human
One reads of so many new ideas nowadays,
gpt
That's true. But there have been some big things done since I was a lad. I remember the first railway at home; the bicycle, the pneumatic tire, and then--the first motor car. Now there's the aeroplane. Flying! That's wonderful, George!
human
It is!
gpt
All this inoculation, too. . . . That's happened in my lifetime. You seldom see people scarred with smallpox, nowadays. When I was a youngster . . . He fell into reminiscences, those peculiar mental rakings over the buried past.
human
It seems only the other day that my father took me by stage-coach from New York to Boston. No subways, then--all that vast subterranean burrowing was unthought of. . . . The suggestion of such a thing would have been enough to send a man to the nearest lunatic asylum. . . . Chloroform, cocaine--all the paraphernalia of modern surgery and medicine. You can't realize the surgeon of my young days. He was merely a glorified butcher. . . . Had to be!