Brave New World words

“Well, they used to be viviparous.”

The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound sigruficance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books.

Small hands reached out un- certainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the il- luminated pages of the books.

Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor.

All the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categorical imperative.

Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour.

Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

There was something des- perate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance.