Status Updates From ارکان جامعه

Lona: Old friendship does not rust.

... tonight we begin a new era. The old era--with its affectation, its hypocrisy and its emptiness, its pretence of virtue and its miserable fear of public opinion--shall be for us like a museum, open for purposes of instruction; ...

Voices: Oh!--No, no!--Yes, yes!

On this occasion we offer our homage especially to the clear-sighted, indefatigable, unselfish--nay, self-sacrificing citizen who has taken the initiative in an undertaking which, we are assured on all sides, will give a powerful impetus to the temporal prosperity and welfare of our community.

Dina: Yes, I will be your wife.

Johan: Dina!

Dina: But first of all I want to work--to make something of myself--as
you have done. I am not going to be merely a thing that is taken.

Lona: Quite right--that is the way.

Ah, what we suffer under the tyranny of habit and custom!

Rummel: It means that the proudest moment of your life has come. A
procession of his fellow citizens is coming to do honour to the first
man of the town.

Bernick: What!

Rummel: In procession--with banners and a band! We ought to have had
torches too; but we did not like to risk that in this stormy weather.
There will be illuminations--and that always sounds well in the
newspapers.

Hilmar: Is it? Why do you suppose these mercenary-minded creatures were so willing to go into the undertaking with you? Don't you suppose they are have scented profit for themselves--

Lona: "The gift of Karsten Bernick," as it says over the gateway. You
seem to be responsible for the whole place here.

(Where have I heard that before?)

Hilmar: Anyhow, I have spent a sleepless night because of them. [ ... ]
Why couldn't he disappear for good and all? It really is insufferable
how hard some people are to kill.

Mrs. Bernick: My dear Hilmar, what are you saying.

Hilmar: Oh, nothing. But here this fellow escapes with a whole skin
from railway accidents and fights with California grizzlies and
Blackfoot Indians--has not even been scalped--. Ugh!

Aune: Yes, I really am afraid, Mr. Bernick. [ ... ] Why should science and capital venture to introduce these new discoveries into labour, before the community has had time to educate a generation up to using them?

Bernick: You read and think too much, Aune; it does you no good, and
that is what makes you dissatisfied with your lot.

Bernick: Hm--she is a giddy little baggage.

Bernick: Oh no; we must not be too hard on foreigners. Of course these
folk have none of the deep-seated instincts of decency which restrain
us within proper bounds. Suppose they do behave outrageously, what does it concern us? Fortunately this spirit of disorder, that flies in the
face of all that is customary and right, is absolutely a stranger to our community, if I may say so--. What is this!

--a man of the world and the pink of courtesy, a perfect gentleman, the darling of all the ladies...

Hilmar: No, I slept very badly. I went for a walk yesterday evening for
my health's sake; and I finished up at the club and read a book about a
Polar expedition. [ ... ]

Mrs. Rummel: But it does not appear to have done you much good, Mr.
Tonnesen.

Hilmar: No, it certainly did not. I lay all night tossing about, only
half asleep, and dreamt that I was being chased by a hideous walrus.

Krap: You must not use your own time in making the men useless in
working hours. Last Saturday you were talking to them of the harm that
would be done to the workmen by our new machines and the new working methods. What makes you do that?

Aune: I do it for the good of the community.

Krap: That's curious, because Mr. Bernick says it is disorganising the
community.

Aune: My community is not Mr. Bernick's, Mr. Krap!