■JReriew of Perieicg. l/S/i'6. 



IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. 



BY H. G. WELLS. 



BOOK THE FIRST-THE COMET. 



Synopsis.- — 77ze narrator tells the story of the Great Change. When a yoiui^ man he was a clerk 

 in a -pot-bank in Clayton. He has been engaged to marry Nettie Stuart, but the girl has broken imth him 

 on account of his socialism and religious doubt. Rc/used an increase of salary, lie decides to give up his 

 position. He takes his troubles to his friend Parload- -a man of his own age and views. Parload has a 

 taste for science, especially astronomy, and is deeply interested in a comet whose path threatens to ap- 

 proach the earth's orbit. 2' he two friends climb a ridge whence they may view the skies, the town be- 

 fore them and the country beyond. Here they discuss the condiiiotis under which they live. 



CHAPTER THE FIRST — DUST IN THE SHADOWS. {Cuut/llued). 



IV. 



We saw everything sim])ly, :is young men will. 



We had our angry, confident solutions, and whoso- 



..ever would criticise them was a friend of the robbers. 

 It was a clear case of robbery, we held — visibly so ; 

 there in those great houses lurked the Landlord anrl 

 Capitalist, with his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his 



■cheat the Priest, and we others were all the victims 

 of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they winked 

 and chuckled o\er their rare wines, amidst their daz- 



.zling, wickedly dressed women, and plotted further 

 grinding for the faces of the poor. And amidst all 

 the squaior on the other hand, amidst brutalities, ig- 

 norance and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously 

 their blameless victim, the Working-Man. And we, 

 almost at the first glance, had found all this out ; 

 it had merely to l)e asserted now with sufficient 



[rhetoric and vehemence to change the face of the 



whole world. The Working-?%lan would arise — in 

 the form of a Labour Party, and with young men 

 like Parload and myself to represent him — and come 



to his own, and then ? 



Then the robbers would gi'l it hot. and everything 

 would be extremely satisfactory. 



Unless my memory plays me strange tricks, this 

 does no injustice to the creed of thought and action 

 that Parload and I held as the final result of human 

 wisdom. We believed it with heat, and rejected with 

 heat, the most obvious qualilication of its harshness. 

 At times, in our great talks, we were fully of heady 

 hopes for the near triumph of our doctrine; more 

 often, our n:oo(l was hot resentment at the wicked- 

 ness and slupirlity that delayed so plain and simple 

 a reconstruction of the order of the world. Then we 

 grew malignant, and thought of barricades aiid sig- 

 nificant violence. I was very bitter, I know, upon 



