A collection of the newspaper columns/essays written by G.K. Chesterton for "The New Witness", under the heading "At the Sign of the World's End". This project compiles the articles from 1922. (Summary by Maria Therese)
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Where do I find the text? Source text (please only read from this text!): https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858045073172&view=1up&seq=7The exact text link for each section is linked in the MW! If you are outside the US, you may not be able to see the text, but it is PD for most if not all readers. Please PM me or post in the thread if you want to see the text of a particular section.
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Some of the sections are marked as "Rough" in the MW. The scans for these are a little rough at the edges of some pages. I have been able to decipher 99% of the words in these texts. Please look at them before claiming and ask for assistance if necessary. (I did have to delete two sections that were not decipherable, unfortunately.)
Also, if you are outside the US, you most likely can not view the text. However, it is PD for most, if not all readers. If you are in this situation, either post in the thread or PM me with what you are interested in reading, and I will get the text to you.
zzy55 wrote: ↑September 20th, 2020, 4:16 pm
Hello, I would like to read chapter 45 "are the journalists joking." I am new to Librivox. My handle is zzy55 and here is my approved 1 minute test.
Hello - I am attaching a partial (about 75%) read of section 46. Length is 9:02 so far. The reason it is only partial is because the Xerox of the second page of content (page 326) cuts off the last word in every line of column 2. If you can tell me where to find a better copy of page 326 I can complete the task and upload it this week. In the meantime, as I am a new reader (and this is my first one) I wanted to send you what I have done so far for any feedback you may have on my way of reading. I did clean the background noise and cut or silenced most of the breaths to improve the quality of the file. Thanks so much for any advice you can share re: finding the source material and/or recording it. Lisa
zzy55 wrote: ↑September 23rd, 2020, 11:28 am
Hello - I am attaching a partial (about 75%) read of section 46. Length is 9:02 so far. The reason it is only partial is because the Xerox of the second page of content (page 326) cuts off the last word in every line of column 2. If you can tell me where to find a better copy of page 326 I can complete the task and upload it this week. In the meantime, as I am a new reader (and this is my first one) I wanted to send you what I have done so far for any feedback you may have on my way of reading. I did clean the background noise and cut or silenced most of the breaths to improve the quality of the file. Thanks so much for any advice you can share re: finding the source material and/or recording it. Lisa
Oh, dear. I'm sorry I did not realize that that one column was so rough! Unfortunately this is the only scan I can find. I went through it and I think I figured out all the words except for two. For the two that are undecipherable, I would just say as an aside "undecipherable word" or something to that affect, and continue on.
practically treated the Premier as if he were the Pope
but was it only kissing his toe, in order to pull
his leg? There would be something national about
such a note of boisterous bathos, the thought of
which pleases me very much, and restores my confidence
in my fellow-countrymen. When they butter
up a politician, perhaps they were only making a
butter-slide. Perhaps the triumphal arch was something of a
booby-trap. In short, is it possible that journalists, who
are intelligent enough as individuals, can take the Fº (I can't figure this one out)
System and the politicians and Parliament and the General
Election, and all the rest of it, with such gravity as anyone
would suppose from reading their remarks? Are all the
men of the world quite so ignorant of the world as they
make out? I should like to study once more the inscrutable
faces of those sphinxes, the editors of the Times and the
Spectator. I have sometimes dared to guess that even fºr(I am guessing it is some paper)
is not so solemn as it seems.
I like to indulge the fancy that by this curved or crooked
English road might come at last that shy thing, the English
revolution. Irish rebels fight with pistols and Italian rebels
with guns and Russian rebels with bombs. It would be
beautifully fitting if English rebels fought with booby traps
and butter-slides. In the first act of the farce there might
be rather too much butter; but it is reassuring to remember
that there are quite enough boobies. If the game is to make
fools of our more pompous publicists, there are many who
will lend themselves to the manufacture, and some for whom
the manufacture is hardly needed. All the factories of a
manufacturing age may be regarded collectively as a factory
of fools. For we are all prone to make fools of ourselves
when we are subject to flattery and safe from free criticism
and the millionaires who rule the modern state are more
fatuously flattered and less seriously criticised than any of
the more responsible rulers of human history. Perhaps after
all the flattery will become so florid and extravagant as to
cure itself, as did many of the flatteries of princes and
nobles in the past. In some of the cases, such as these
which I have quoted, the joke has not only become to
funny to be mistaken, but almost too obvious to be funny.
But to have kept up the joke, if it is a joke, so long and
so successfully is really the achievement of an artist; and
I offer my very hearty admiration to any such journalist.
I apologise to him, if I have slandered him in thinking him
sincere.