I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon
him, and I felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I
might drag its carcass to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other
trouble as well. "What do you think of me NOW, Nettie?"

That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking,
then, for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload
that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in
the outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming
industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang
protesting, denouncing. . . .

You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent
stuff; particularly if you are of the younger generation born since
the Change you will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world
thinks clearly, thinks with deliberation, pellucid certainties, you
find it impossible to imagine how any other thinking could have
been possible. Let me tell you then how you can bring yourself
to something like the condition of our former state. In the first
place you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and
eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you
must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and
uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five
days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be
interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal
significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into
a room that is not ventilated at all, and that is already full of
foul air, and there set yourself to think out some very complicated
problem. In a very little while you will find yourself in a state