I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself

"I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself," Hare-Lip  announced; "and if any man tried to take it away from me, I'd have  killed him." The old man laughed. "Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all  the forest, everything? Any food-getter who would not get food for us,  him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that.  They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare  and administer to us a thousand—a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo—a thousand  satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those  days—Professor James Howard Smith. And my lecture courses were very  popular—that is, very many of the young men and women liked to hear me  talk about the books other men had written. "And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands  were soft, because I did no work with them, and my body was clean  all over and dressed in the softest garments— "He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust. "We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better  garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often  every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go  swimming." "Neither do you Granzer," Hoo-Hoo retorted. "I know, I know, I am a filthy old man, but times have changed. Nobody  washes these days, there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I  have seen a piece of soap. "You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling  the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called  it a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs.  Remember that word—germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a  woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when  they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that  you cannot see it—" Hoo-Hoo began to laugh. "You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you  can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How  do you know anything you can't see?" "A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see—some of  them. We had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put  them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger  than they really were, and many things we could not see without the  microscopes at all. Our best ultramicroscopes could make a germ look  forty thousand times larger. A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like  Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the  germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we  had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the  forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And  thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see.  Take a grain of sand. Break it into ten pieces. Take one piece and break  it into ten. Break one of those pieces into ten, and one of those into  ten, and one of those into ten, and one of those into ten, and do it all  day, and maybe, by sunset, you will have a piece as small as one of the  germs." The boys were openly incredulous. Hare-Lip sniffed and sneered  and Hoo-Hoo snickered, until Edwin nudged them to be silent. "The woodtick sucks the blood of the dog, but the germ, being so very  small, goes right into the blood of the body, and there it has  many children. In those days there would be as many as a billion—a  crab-shell, please—as many as that crab-shell