The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories

The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories by E.M. Forster gathers The Story of a Panic, The Other Side of the Hedge, The Celestial Omnibus, Other Kingdom, The Curate's Friend and The Road from Colonus. The narrator of The Story of a Panic calls himself a plain, simple man with no pretensions to literary style, and says Eustace's career certainly dates from that afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. A character named Leyland says the great God Pan is dead, and speaks of the Nereids who have left the waters and the Oreads the mountains, so that the woods no longer give shelter to Pan.

Mr. Sandbach answers that Pan is dead, which is why the woods do not shelter him. Mr. Bons screams that he sees no one and nothing and wants to go back, and the driver replies that he is the means and not the end. Ethel, startled into impoliteness, says what a perfectly ridiculous idea it was and that the other must have known she was joking.