"Punishment, eh?" said one starry like ex-soldier type. "You lot should be exterminated. Like so many noisome pests. Punishment indeed."
"All right, all right," I said. "Everybody's entitled to his opinion. Forgive me, all. I must go now." And I started to itty out of this mesto of bezoomny old men. Aspirin, that was it. You could snuff it on a hundred aspirin. Aspirin from the old drugstore. But the crystallography veck creeched: "Don't let him go. We'll teach him all about punishment, the murderous young pig. Get him." And, believe it, brothers, or do the other veshch, two or three starry dodderers, about ninety years old apiece, grabbed me with their trembly old rookers, and I was like made sick by the von of old age and disease which came from these near-dead moodges. The crystal veck was on to me now, starting to deal me malenky weak tolchocks on my litso, and I tried to get away and itty out, but these starry rookers that held me were stronger than I had thought. Then other starry vecks came hobbling from the gazettas to have a go at Your Humble Narrator. They were creeching veshches like: "Kill him, stamp on him, murder him, kick his teeth in," and all that cal, and I could viddy what it was clear enough. It was old age having a go at youth, that's what it was. But some of them were saying: "Poor old Jack, near killed poor old Jack he did, this is the young swine" and so on, as though it had all happened yesterday. Which to them I suppose it had. There was now like a sea of vonny runny dirty old men trying to get at me with their like feeble rookers and horny old claws, creeching and panting on to me, but our crystal droog was there in front, dealing out tolchock after tolchock. And I daren't do a solitary single veshch, O my brothers, it being better to be hit at like that than to want to sick and feel that horrible pain, but of course the fact that there was violence going on made me feel that the sickness was peeping round the corner to viddy whether to come out into the open and roar away.
Then an attendant veck came along, a youngish veck,and he creeched: "What goes on here? Stop it at once. This is a reading room." But nobody took any notice. So the attendant veck said: "Right, I shall phone the police." So I creeched, and I never thought I would ever do that in all my jeezny: "Yes yes yes, do that, protect me from these old madmen." I noticed that the attendant veck was not too anxious to join in the dratsing and rescue me from the rage and madness of these starry vecks' claws; he just scatted off to his like office or wherever the telephone was. Now these old men were panting a lot now, and I felt I could just flick at them and they would all fall over, but I just let myself be held, very patient, by these starry rookers, my glazzies closed, and feel the feeble tolchocks on my litso, also slooshy the panting breathy old golosses creeching: "Young swine, young murderer, hooligan, thug, kill him." Then I got such a real painful tolchock on the nose that I said to myself to hell to hell, and I opened my glazzies up and started to struggle to get free, which was not hard, brothers, and I tore off creeching to the sort of hallway outside the reading-room. But these starry avengers still came after me, panting like dying, with their animal claws all trembling to get at your friend and Humble Narrator. Then I was tripped up and was on the floor and was being kicked at, then I slooshied golosses of young vecks creeching: "All right, all right, stop it now," and I knew the police had arrived.
3