文档介绍：TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM
TWELVE STORIES
AND A DREAM
H. G. WELLS
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TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM
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
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TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM
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, of Filmer's life and
death.
The first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history is a document
in which he applies for admission as a paid student in physics to the
Government labo