And over everything was a
curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour,
that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very
comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several
bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance
like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no
writing materials. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of
peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that
harmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of
this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a
white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory
idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for
books, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed like
Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain
of the words.
"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King."
"Phonetic spelling," he said. He remembered reading a story with that
title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the
world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He
puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. "The Heart of Darkness"
he had never heard of before nor "The Madonna of the Future"--no doubt if
they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
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