Page 125 - BRAVE NEW WORLD By Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

imminence of His Coming," he repeated, with a

sincere attempt to feel that the coming was

imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him,

and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was

horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to

Clara Deterding. "It'll be a failure again," he said to

himself. "I know it will." But he went on doing his

best to beam.

The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting

his hand, the President gave a signal; the chorus

broke out into the third Solidarity Hymn.

"Feel how the Greater Being comes! Rejoice

and, in rejoicings, die! Melt in the music of the

drums! For I am you and you are I."

As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled

with an ever intenser excitement. The sense of the

Coming's imminence was like an electric tension in

the air. The President switched off the music and,

with the final note of the final stanza, there was

absolute silence–the silence of stretched

expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic

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