← 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. 🔊
← Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep in order to hear what he had to say. 🔊
← After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. 🔊
← No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. 🔊
← Each was sold at a year old−you will never see one of them again. 🔊
← For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones. I am twelve years old and have had over four hundred children. 🔊
← 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. 🔊
← It is called Beasts of England." Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. 🔊
← 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. 🔊
← The skull of old Major, now clean of flesh, had been disinterred from the orchard and set up on a stump at the foot of the flagstaff, beside the gun. 🔊
← In the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed equally terrible, but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among themselves. 🔊
← These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. 🔊
← But for the first time it occurred to him that he was eleven years old and that perhaps his great muscles were not quite what they had once been. 🔊
← But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so. 🔊
← To tell you the truth, I had been looking forward to my retirement. And perhaps, as Benjamin is growing old too, they will let him retire at the same time and be a companion to me." 🔊
← But the explanation was really very simple. The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old name out. 🔊
← YEARS passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. 🔊
← 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. 🔊
← The title−deeds, which were in his own possession, were owned by the pigs jointly. He did not believe, he said, that any of the old suspicions still lingered, but certain changes had been made recently in the routine of the farm which should have the effect of promoting confidence still further. 🔊
← What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. 🔊