Text from Brave New World

The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC) is leading a tour of young students in the laboratory in the centre of London.

The D.H.C. and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. 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. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom1. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth2, 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 marble3.

The nurses stiffened4 to attention as the D.H.C. came in.

'Set out the books,' he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out

– a row of nursery quartos5 opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.

'Now bring in the children.'

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden6, on all its four wire-netted shelves7, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly like (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

'Put them down on the floor.'

The infants were unloaded8.

1. Big bowls …blossom: Grandi vasi, tutti pieni di fiori.

2. ripe-blown and silkily smooth: completamente aperti e sericamente morbidi.

3. marble: marmo.

4. stiffened: s'irrigidirono.

5. a row of nursery quartos: una fila in quarto per l'infanzia.

6. each pushing …laden: spingendo ognuna una specie di scaffale.

7. four wire-netted shelves: scaffali di rete metallica.

8. were unloaded: furono scaricati.