Animal Farm

At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already ensconced on his bed of straw, under a lantern which hung from a beam.

But they woke at dawn as usual, and suddenly remembering the glorious thing that had happened, they all raced out into the pasture together.

A little way down the pasture there was a knoll that commanded a view of most of the farm.

One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins.

They met with many difficulties--for instance, later in the year, when they harvested the corn, they had to tread it out in the ancient style and blow away the chaff with their breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine--but the pigs wit

In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, they hurled themselves into the air in great leaps of excitement.

Now that the small field beyond the orchard had been set aside for barley, it was rumoured that a corner of the large pasture was to be fenced off and turned into a grazing-ground for superannuated animals.

None of you has ever seen a dead donkey," and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.

Huge boulders, far too big to be used as they were, were lying all over the bed of the quarry.

After much thought Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in effect be reduced to a single maxim, namely: "Four legs good, two legs bad."

For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a "readjustment," never as a "reduction"), but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous.

Nevertheless, without openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the two of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.

These Seven Commandments would now be inscribed on the wall; they would form an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after.

With his books held open by a stone, and with a piece of chalk gripped between the knuckles of his trotter, he would move rapidly to and fro, drawing in line after line and uttering little whimpers of excitement.

The young pigs were piebald, and as Napoleon was the only boar on the farm, it was possible to guess at their parentage.

And so within five minutes of their invasion they were in ignominious retreat by the same way as they had come, with a flock of geese hissing after them and pecking at their calves all the way.

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.

And the news soon leaked out that every pig was now receiving a ration of a pint of beer daily, with half a gallon for Napoleon himself, which was always served to him in the Crown Derby soup tureen.

Nobody shirked--or almost nobody.

For that day we all must labour, Though we die before it break; Cows and horses, geese and turkeys, All must toil for freedom's sake.

He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death.

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken to my joyful tidings Of the golden future time.

For five days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting boxes.

That night there was the sound of uproarious singing, which was followed by what sounded like a violent quarrel and ended at about eleven o'clock with a tremendous crash of glass.