H G Wells

Mr. Skelmersdale In Fairyland - Original Edition H G Wells

"There's a man in that shop," said the Doctor, "who has been in Fairyland." "Nonsense!" I said, and stared back at the shop. It was the usual village shop, post-office, telegraph wire on its brow, zinc pans and brushes outside, boots, shirtings, and potted meats in the window. "Tell me about it," I said, after a pause. "I don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of lout- Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody about here believes it like Bible truth." I reverted presently to the topic. "I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't want to know. I attended him for a broken finger-Married and Single cricket match- and that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows you the sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to get modern sanitary ideas into a people like this!" "Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tell me about that business of the Bonham drain. Things of that kind, I observe, are apt to weigh on the minds of Medical Officers of Health. I was as sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the Bonham people "asses," I said they were "thundering asses," but even that did not allay him. Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to seclude myself, while finishing my chapter on Spiritual Pathology-it was really, I believe, stiffer to write than it is to read-took me to Bignor.