mn any ordinary person spoke to a capital vringe and bow to him, and take off his cap him as “Sir.” The chief of all the capitalists was called the King, and— But he knew the rest of the catalogue. There would be men- tion of the bishops in their lawn sleeves, the judges in their er- mine robes, the pillory, the stocks, the treadmill, the cat-o'-nine-tails, the Lord Mayor's Banquet, and the practice of kissing the Pope's toe. There was also something called the Jus primae noctis, which would probably not be mentioned in a textbook for children. It was the law by which every capi- talist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories. How could you tell how much of it was lies? It might be ‘true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only evidence to the con- trary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. dee -oslinginessaitsslistiessmeSS™bife, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party was trying to