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.
Muriel was dead; Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher were dead. Jones too was dead−he had died in an
inebriates' home in another part of the country. Snowball was forgotten. Boxer was forgotten, except
by the few who had known him. Clover was an old stout mare now, stiff in the joints and with a
tendency to rheumy eyes. She was two years past the retiring age, but in fact, no animal had ever
actually retired. The talk of setting aside a corner of the pasture for superannuated animals had long
since been dropped. Napoleon was now a mature boar of twenty−four stone. Squealer was so fat that
he could with difficulty see out of his eyes. Only old Benjamin was much the same as ever, except
for being a little greyer about the muzzle, and, since Boxer's death, more morose and taciturn than
ever.
There were many more creatures on the farm now, though the increase was not so great as had been
expected in earlier years. Many animals had been born to whom the Rebellion was only a dim
tradition, passed on by word of mouth, and others had been bought who had never heard mention of
such a thing before their arrival. The farm possessed three horses now besides Clover. They were fine
upstanding beasts, willing workers, and good comrades, but very stupid. None of them proved able to
learn the alphabet beyond the letter B. They accepted everything that they were told about the
Rebellion and the principles of Animalism, especially from Clover, for whom they had almost
filial respect; but it was doubtful whether they understood very much of it.
The farm was more prosperous now, and better organised: it had even been enlarged by two fields
which had been bought from Mr. Pilkington. The windmill had been successfully completed at last,
and the farm possessed a threshing machine and a hay elevator of its own, and various new buildings
had been added to it. Whymper had bought himself a dogcart. The windmill, however, had not after
all been used for generating electrical power. It was used for milling corn and brought in a handsome
money profit. The animals were hard at work building yet another windmill; when that one was
finished, so it was said, the dynamos would be installed. But the luxuries of which Snowball had
once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the
three−day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the
spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally.
Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any
richer except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. Perhaps this was partly because there were so
