The Road to Wellville

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Book: The Road to Wellville Read Free
Author: T.C. Boyle
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was at this moment that Dr. Linniman dashed through the rear door, an air of breathless urgency about him, two identical packages wrapped in white butcher’s paper held out before him in offering.
    “Ah,” the Doctor exclaimed, pushing at his spectacles, “Dr. Linniman.” And then he lifted his head to address the audience at large. “And now, to return, if we may, to Mrs. Tindermarsh’s query regarding porterhouse steak and its value as a food source—” He broke off here to lean forward and give Dr. Linniman, who now stood before him, these further instructions: “Frank, would you examine the scales, please, weigh the respective samples and prepare slides of a precisely equal portion of each? Thank you.”
    A murmur from the audience. A few titters, a spatter of applause.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to provide you with a pair of demonstrations that should, I would fervently hope, forever turn you away from such a disgusting and unnatural food as this. I say ‘disgusting’ because of its high bacterial content—a content I will show to be equal to or greater than that of barnyard ordure—and I say ‘unnatural’ because this flesh food is an innovation and corruption of modern man, whose ancestors have been proven by such eminent researchers as Von Freiling in Germany and Du Pomme of the Pasteur Institute to be exclusively frugivorous. And, too, I will assert that such foods are in fact ‘sinful,’ as Mrs. Tindermarsh would have it, not only in the sin occasioned by the taking of the lives of our fellow creatures—and I would think that the piteous bleats of those blameless herds led to slaughter would ringin the ears of any flesh eater the moment his head hits the pillow at night—but in the very greatest sin of all, and that is, of course, in polluting the temple of the human body.”
    The audience was hushed now, sitting rapt and motionless in the orthopedically correct chairs the Doctor had himself designed. Someone—was that Mr. Praetz, of Cleveland?—suppressed a cough.
    “Frank?” The doctor swiveled round briskly to where Dr. Linniman had joined him at the rear of the small stage. “Are we ready?”
    A plain deal table stood just behind him; on it, conspicuously displayed, were the beefsteak from the Post Tavern and the grainy pungent sample from the livery stable. Between these two exhibits, Dr. Linniman had set up a matching pair of microscopes and a small naked incandescent bulb for illumination. “Yes, sir,” he answered. “All ready.”
    “Good.” Turning once more to the audience, Dr. Kellogg flashed a toothy smile and rubbed his hands together with relish. “Now, we’ll need a disinterested party as observer—do I have any volunteers? No? How about you, Miss Muntz?”
    A little gasp, a titter, and there, in the fifth row, was Miss Muntz, coloring prettily.
    “Don’t be shy, Miss Muntz—this is all in the interest of science.”
    There were murmurs of encouragement, and in the next moment Miss Ida Muntz was clutching the sides of her skirts and making her way up the aisle, where she daintily mounted the three steps to the podium.
    “Now, Miss Muntz,” the Doctor began, and he momentarily lost his train of thought as he saw how she towered over him—she was pretty, yes, and she gave them something to look at, greensickness and all, but he should have thought to choose someone with a little less legbone, for God’s sake. He fumbled a moment, uncharacteristically, and repeated himself: “Miss Muntz. Miss Muntz, I would like you to examine the slides beneath these identical microscopes and describe to us what you see, remembering that only Dr. Linniman knows which of these specimens is Mrs. Tindermarsh’s beefsteak and which the, well”—laughter from the audience—“the waste product of an animal very much like the one sacrificed for the venal tastes of the gourmands at the Post Tavern.”
    The moment was exquisite: the girl bent prettily over the microscope,

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