← Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. 🔊
← When Major saw that they had all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he cleared his throat and began: "Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last night. 🔊
← But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say first. 🔊
← All animals are equal. "And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. 🔊
← I cannot describe that dream to you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man has vanished. 🔊
← Last night, however, it came back to me in my dream. And what is more, the words of the song also came back−words, I am certain, which were sung by the animals of long ago and have been lost to memory for generations. 🔊
← It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, "Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? 🔊
← The hens woke up squawking with terror because they had all dreamed simultaneously of hearing a gun go off in the distance. 🔊
← The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon's orders. 🔊
← But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three−day week, were no longer talked about. 🔊
← None of the old dreams had been abandoned. The Republic of the Animals which Major had foretold, when the green fields of England should be untrodden by human feet, was still believed in. 🔊