d not been murdered, you understand, but
the people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so beyond its
healthy limits.)

This little community had returned from its original habits of suburban
parasitism to what no doubt had been the normal life of humanity for
nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate
contact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes
and exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulants
satisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such
had been the life of the European peasant from the dawn of history to
the beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of the
people of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it
had seemed that, by virtue of machines, and scientific civilisation,
Europe was to be lifted out of this perpetual round of animal drudgery,
and that America was to evade it very largely from the outset. And with
the smash of the high and dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical
civilisation that had arisen so marvellously, back to the land came the
common man, back to the manure.

The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a
greater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary law
and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest. The world
rediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communities
together. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted to an old Baptist
minister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a good
principle called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical female
influence called the Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol.
This Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conception
deprived of any element of material application; it had no relation to
the occasional finds of whiskey and wine in Londoners' cellars that gave
Bun Hill its only holidays. He taught this doctrine on Sundays, and
on weekdays he was an amiable and kindly old man, distinguished by his
quaint disposition to wash his hands, and if possible his face, daily,
and with a wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his Sunday
services in the old church in the Beckenham Road, and then the
countryside came out in a curious reminiscence of the urban dress of
Edwardian times. All the men without exception wore frock coats, top
hats, and white shirts, though many had no boots. Tom w