← No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth. 🔊
← But it reminded me of something that I had long forgotten. Many years ago, when I was a little pig, my mother and the other sows used to sing an old song of which they knew only the tune and the first three words. 🔊
← HOW they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped. 🔊
← And not an animal on the farm had stolen so much as a mouthful. All through that summer the work of the farm went like clockwork. 🔊
← First came the hoisting of the flag. Snowball had found in the harness−room an old green tablecloth of Mrs. Jones's and had painted on it a hoof and a horn in white. 🔊
← They were gored, kicked, bitten, trampled on. There was not an animal on the farm that did not take vengeance on them after his own fashion. 🔊
← He announced that from now on the Sunday−morning Meetings would come to an end. 🔊
← He had made arrangements with the cockerel to call him three−quarters of an hour earlier in the mornings instead of half an hour. 🔊
← And when, some days afterwards, it was announced that from now on the pigs would get up an hour later in the mornings than the other animals, no complaint was made about that either. 🔊
← Boxer would even come out at nights and work for an hour or two on his own by the light of the harvest moon. 🔊
← In the morning the animals came out of their stalls to find that the flagstaff had been blown down and an elm tree at the foot of the orchard had been plucked up like a radish. 🔊
← Napoleon was hesitating between the two, unable to make up his mind. It was noticed that whenever he seemed on the point of coming to an agreement with Frederick, Snowball was declared to be in hiding at Foxwood, while, when he inclined toward Pilkington, Snowball was said to be at Pinchfield. 🔊
← But it was some minutes before they could fully take it in. They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how they had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. 🔊
← Without any further prompting they confessed that they had been secretly in touch with Snowball ever since his expulsion, that they had collaborated with him in destroying the windmill, and that they had entered into an agreement with him to hand over Animal Farm to Mr. Frederick. 🔊
← At the same time Napoleon assured the animals that the stories of an impending attack on Animal Farm were completely untrue, and that the tales about Frederick's cruelty to his own animals had been greatly exaggerated. 🔊
← And about half an hour later, when Boxer had somewhat recovered, he was with difficulty got on to his feet, and managed to limp back to his stall, where Clover and Benjamin had prepared a good bed of straw for him. 🔊
← It was a source of great satisfaction to him, he said−and, he was sure, to all others present−to feel that a long period of mistrust and misunderstanding had now come to an end. 🔊
← Like all of Napoleon's speeches, it was short and to the point. He too, he said, was happy that the period of misunderstanding was at an end. 🔊
← Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away. 🔊
← But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. 🔊