om minute
to minute, through the hideous stimulus of hypocrisy.

The "argument" grew heated; half a dozen tidy quarrels arose; all the
sages went at it fiercely, except Roger Tabor, who stole quietly away.
The aged men were enjoying themselves thoroughly, especially those who
quarrelled. Naturally, the frail bark of the topic which had been
launched was whirled about by too many side-currents to remain long in
sight, and soon became derelict, while the intellectual dolphins dove
and tumbled in the depths. At the end of twenty minutes Mr. Arp
emerged upon the surface, and in his mouth was this:

"Tell me, why ain't the Church--why ain't the Church and the rest of
the believers in a future life lookin' for immortality at the other end
of life, too? If we're immortal, we always have been; then why don't
they ever speculate on what we were before we were born? It's because
they're too blame selfish--don't care a flapdoodle about what WAS, all
they want is to go on livin' forever."

Mr. Arp's voice had risen to an acrid triumphancy, when it suddenly
faltered, relapsed to a murmur, and then to a stricken silence, as a
tall, fat man of overpowering aspect threw open the outer door near by
and crossed the lobby to the clerk's desk. An awe fell upon the sages
with this advent. They were hushed, and after a movement in their
chairs, with a strange effect of huddling, sat disconcerted and
attentive, like school-boys at the entrance of the master.

The personage had a big, fat, pink face and a heavily undershot jaw,
what whitish beard he wore following his double chin somewhat after the
manner displayed in the portraits of Henry the Eighth. His eyes, very
bright under puffed upper lids, were intolerant and insultingly
penetrating despite their small size. Their irritability held a kind
of hotness, and yet the personage exuded frost, not of the weather, all
about him. You could not imagine man or angel daring to greet this
being genially--sooner throw a kiss to Mount Pilatus!

"Mr. Brown," he said, with ponderous hostility, in a bull bass, to the
clerk--the kind of voice which would have made an express train leave
the track and go round the other way--"do you hear me?"

"Oh yes, Judge," the clerk replied, swiftly, in tones as unlike those
which he used for strange transients as a collector's voice in his
ladylove's ear is unlike that which he propels at delinquents.

"Do you see that snow?" asked the personage, threat