inter of all time if he
could have lived as long as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he
was still, as he said himself, a gentleman amateur, like all modern
painters.

BURGE-LUBIN. But why had you to marry an elderly man? Why not marry a
young one? or shall I say a middle-aged one? If my own affections were
not already engaged; and if, to tell the truth, I were not a
little afraid of you--for you are a very superior woman, as we all
acknowledge--I should esteem myself happy in--er--er--

MRS LUTESTRING. Mr President: have you ever tried to take advantage of
the innocence of a little child for the gratification of your senses?

BURGE-LUBIN. Good Heavens, madam, what do you take me for? What right
have you to ask me such a question?

MRS LUTESTRING. I am at present in my two hundred and seventy-fifth
year. You suggest that I should take advantage of the innocence of a
child of thirty, and marry it.

THE ARCHBISHOP. Can you shortlived people not understand that as the
confusion and immaturity and primitive animalism in which we live for
the first hundred years of our life is worse in this matter of sex than
in any other, you are intolerable to us in that relation?

BURGE-LUBIN. Do you mean to say, Mrs Lutestring, that you regard me as a
child?

MRS LUTESTRING. Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh,
you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your
ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you
that if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be
tempted to doubt your right to live at all.

CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three
hundred!

BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity! Must I remind you, madam, that I
am the President, and that you are only the head of a department?

BARNABAS. Ingratitude too! You draw a pension for three hundred years
when we owe you only seventy-eight; and you call us ungrateful!

MRS LUTESTRING. I do. When I think of the blessings that have been
showered on you, and contrast them with the poverty! the humiliations!
the anxieties! the heartbreak! the insolence and tyranny that were the
daily lot of mankind when I was learning to suffer instead of learning
to live! when I see how lightly you take it all! how you quarrel over
the crumpled leaves in your beds of roses! how you are so dainty about
your work that unless it is made either interesting or delightful to you
you leave it to