Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/297

wife, indeed, grumbled a trifle at the cost, which would certainly reach a thousand energy, that is E100 per century; while I, for my part, demurred at avoidable delay, and would incur even the extra cost of the extreme heat vibrations. But first, there must, as usual, be a search amongst existing records, which might possibly supply us, ready-made, and at very much less cost, with just what we wanted. Accordingly we advertised our want, giving time, place, and some other guiding circumstances; and curiously enough there was sent us, in postal course, what was apparently just the beginning of the very repast in question. It proved indeed to be the very event we sought, but in a most disappointing way; for not only was our ancestral mother turned from us, stooping, and in the act of laying the cloth upon the beach gravel, close to the then new pier of the place, but our venerable father himself, who appeared to be busy drawing a beer-bottle cork, had also his stooping back to us, and moreover, by the embonpoint of his goodly figure, was shadowing from our view about one-half of the rest of the family. We all exclaimed that this was not satisfactory, and that a fishing for quarter to half an hour further on must be instituted. We accordingly passed the order to one of the companies (by the way, as I was one of its agents, I secured the trade discount), and were fortunate to have back, in duly brief time, a response view for 22′ 11″ after the time of the rejected picture, with the family all distinctly before us, and all, as we had expected, hard and most healthily at work with teeth and jaws. In order to live and work we must all eat, even if we are not usually seen to most striking advantage in that way.