B939 <=> B941 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 940]

“In short, before my arrival in the city of Chicago, I was already fully convinced that a ‘marvel’ unprecedented on the Earth existed there.

“I must mention here that I had always been greatly interested in these establishments of theirs, namely, those places where your favorites destroy the existence of various forms of terrestrial beings; and furthermore, from the time when I began organizing my observatory on the planet Mars, and had to do with various machines for it, I took always and everywhere a great interest in every other sort of machine as well.

“So, when I happened to be in this same city of Chicago, I thought it would be inexcusable on my part not to use the opportunity to see this famous ‘Chicago slaughterhouse.’ So, in the morning, on the day of my departure from there, I decided to go, accompanied by one of my new Chicago acquaintances to inspect this rare construction of your favorites.

“Having arrived there, we took as our guide, on the advice of one of the assistants of the chief director, an employee of a branch of some bank there which was connected with this slaughterhouse, and together with him we set off to inspect the place.

“Accompanied by him we first of all went through the places where the unfortunate quadruped beings are driven and where they remain until their slaughter.

“This place was in no way different from that of all establishments of the kind on your planet, except that this particular place was on a considerably larger scale. On the other hand, it was very much dirtier than any of the slaughterhouses I had previously seen in other countries.

“Afterwards we went through several more what are called ‘annexes.’ One of them was the ‘cold storage’ for the meat that was ready; in another they destroyed the existence of quadruped beings simply with hammers and also stripped off their hide – again in the manner usual in other slaughterhouses.