The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Stories and a Dream, by H. G. Wells

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Title: Twelve Stories and a Dream

Author: H. G. Wells

Posting Date: September 21, 2008 [EBook #1743]
Release Date: May, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM ***

Produced by Aaron Cannon, and Stephanie Johnson

TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM

By H. G. Wells

CONTENTS

1. Filmer

2. The Magic Shop

3. The Valley of Spiders

4. The Truth About Pyecraft

5. Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland

6. The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost

7. Jimmy Goggles the God

8. The New Accelerator

9. Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation

10. The Stolen Body

11. Mr. Brisher's Treasure

12. Miss Winchelsea's Heart

13. A Dream of Armageddon

1. FILMER

In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men--this
man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last only one vigorous
intellectual effort was needed to finish the work. But the inexorable
injustice of the popular mind has decided that of all these thousands,
one man, and that a man who never flew, should be chosen as the
discoverer, just as it has chosen to honour Watt as the discoverer of
steam and Stephenson of the steam-engine. And surely of all honoured
names none is so grotesquely and tragically honoured as poor Filmer's,
the timid, intellectual creature who solved the problem over which the
world had hung perplexed and a little fearful for so many generations,
the man who pressed the button that has changed peace and warfare and
well-nigh every condition of human life and happiness. Never has that
recurring wonder of the littleness of the scientific man in the face of
the greatness of his science found such an amazing exemplification.
Much concerning Filmer is, and must remain, profoundly obscure--Filmers
attract no Boswells--but the essential facts and the concluding scene
are clear enough, and there are letters, and notes, and casual allusions
to piece the whole together. And this is the story one makes, putting
this thing with that,