The volunteer paused for a moment in thought and then addressed the corporal:

— Are you familiar with the magazine 'Animal World'?

— That magazine—the corporal replied, happy that the conversation was shifting in another direction—was subscribed to by our village innkeeper, because he was very fond of Angora goats, but they all died on him. Then he turned to the magazine for advice.

— My dear friend—the volunteer said—my story, which will follow immediately, will show you very clearly that every deed awaits its reward. I am convinced, gentlemen, that you too will interrupt your game, for what I am about to tell you will be quite interesting if only because you will not even understand many of the specific terms. I will tell you the case of this 'Animal World' so that we may forget our everyday cares and worries.

How I actually became the editor of this extremely interesting magazine remained an insoluble mystery to me for a long time, until I finally concluded that it had happened to me in a moment of mental eclipse, in which I had allowed myself to be persuaded out of friendship for my old acquaintance Hašek, who had until then been honestly editing this magazine, but had then fallen in love with the publisher's daughter. This publisher, by the name of Fuchs, had kicked him out with the condition that Hašek find him a proper editor. As you can see, the professional relations back then were quite strange.

The magazine's publisher, when my friend Hašek introduced us, received me quite kindly, asked if I had any sense at all regarding animals, and was very satisfied with my answer that I had always loved animals because I see in them a transitional stage to humans, and had always respected their inclinations and desires from the viewpoint of animal welfare. No animal, before it is eaten, desires anything other than to be slaughtered, if possible, without pain.

A carp is convinced from birth that it is very ugly for a cook to slit its stomach while it is still alive. The animal protection society opposes the custom of wringing chickens' necks, demanding that poultry be slaughtered by trained people. The shrivelled bodies of fried gudgeon testify that in dying they protested against the custom existing in Podolia of frying them alive in margarine. Turkeys…

Here he interrupted me, asking if I was knowledgeable about poultry farming, dog breeding, rabbit farming, beekeeping, the peculiarities of the animal kingdom, whether I would be able to cut out pictures for reproduction from other magazines, translate special articles about animals from foreign magazines, find something useful in Brehm, write editorial articles by drawing material from the animal kingdom and adapting it to Catholic holidays, changes in the weather, races, hunting, police dog training, national and church holidays, in a word, whether I would be able to grasp the situation and express my thoughts in a short, pithy editorial.

I replied that I had often thought about the question of running a magazine like 'Animal World' and was fully capable of filling all its sections and subsections, as I was familiar with the mentioned topics. I will strive to lift the magazine to unprecedented heights by reorganising it in terms of both form and content. I want to introduce new sections, for example, 'Animal Fun Corner', 'Animals on Animals', while keeping the current political situation in mind; I want to give readers surprise after surprise, so that they don't even have time to catch their breath while reading descriptions of various animals. The section 'A Day in the Animal Kingdom' must be replaced with 'A New Programme for Solving the Livestock Question' and 'The Cattle Movement'.

He interrupted me again, saying that for now this was quite enough and that if I were to accomplish even half of what I had promised, he would give me a pair of pygmy pigeons which had received first prize at the latest Berlin poultry exhibition and whose owner had been awarded a gold medal for exemplary cross-breeding of the species.

It must be said that I truly did try to realise my programme in the magazine as much as my abilities allowed, and what's more, I even concluded that my articles exceeded my abilities. As I wanted to introduce the public to something completely new, I began inventing animals. I was guided by the principle that, for example, the elephant, tiger, lion, monkey, mole, horse, pig, etc., were all long known to the readers of 'Animal World' and that they needed to be provided with new discoveries in this field, so I invented the sour-bellied whale. This new species of whale was the size of a dolphin, and in its anal canal, it had a special bladder filled with formic acid, from which my whale would noisily spray a stunning, deadly acid—which a later English scientist—I don't recall what name I gave him—called whale acid—at the little fish it was preparing to devour. Everyone knew whale oil, but the new acid interested some readers, and they inquired as to which firm manufactured this acid. In general, I must say that the readers of 'Animal World' were very curious people.

To be continued…