Our proposal to use it in the elementary schools!"

I said something about that the other day--quite in passing--little

affair at a Polytechnic. Trying to make it clear the stuff was really

highly beneficial. Not in the slightest degree dangerous, in spite of

those first little accidents. Which cannot possibly occur again.... You

know it would be rather good stuff--But he's taken it up."

What did you say?"

Mere obvious nothings. But as you see---! Takes it up with perfect

gravity. Treats the thing as an attack. Says there is already a

sufficient waste of public money in elementary schools without this.

Tells the old stories about piano lessons again--you know. No one; he

says, wishes to prevent the children of the lower classes obtaining an

education suited to their condition, but to give them a food of this

sort will be to destroy their sense of proportion utterly. Expands the

topic. What Good will it do, he asks, to make poor people six-and-thirty

feet high? He really believes, you know, that they will be thirty-six

feet high."

"So they would be," said Bensington, "if you gave them our food at all

regularly. But nobody said anything---"

I said something."

128

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth