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At first--except for Broadbeam--the tone of the public mind was quite
free from any touch of hostility. It did not seem to occur to the public
mind as anything but a mere playful supposition that any more
Herakleophorbia was going to escape again. And it did not seem to occur
to the public mind that the growing little band of babies now being fed
on the food would presently be growing more "up" than most of us ever
grow. The sort of thing that pleased the public mind was caricatures of
eminent politicians after a course of Boom-feeding, uses of the idea on
hoardings, and such edifying exhibitions as the dead wasps that had
escaped the fire and the remaining hens.
Beyond that the public did not care to look, until very strenuous
efforts were made to turn its eyes to the remoter consequences, and even
then for a while its enthusiasm for action was partial. "There's always
somethin' New," said the public--a public so glutted with novelty that
it would hear of the earth being split as one splits an apple without
surprise, and, "I wonder what they'll do next."
But there were one or two people outside the public, as it were, who did
already take that further glance, and some it seems were frightened by
what they saw there. There was young Caterham, for example, cousin of
the Earl of Pewterstone, and one of the most promising of English
politicians, who, taking the risk of being thought a faddist, wrote a
long article in the Nineteenth Century and After to suggest its total
suppression. And--in certain of his moods, there was Bensington.
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