on the face of the earth. There is a good
deal of that fat still clinging to us.

BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms
of our national character, Mr Archbishop.

THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of
Saint Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which
bears on its pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call
sinners, but the righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say
is that our routine work, and what may be called our ornamental and
figure-head work, is being more and more sought after by the English;
whilst the thinking, organizing, calculating, directing work is done by
yellow brains, brown brains, and black brains, just as it was done in
my early days by Jewish brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German
brains. The only white men who still do serious work are those who, like
the Accountant General, have no capacity for enjoyment, and no social
gifts to make them welcome outside their offices.

BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
anyhow.

THE ARCHBISHOP [_disregarding this outburst_] If you were to kill me as
I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the
power slip into the hands of the colored people. In another hundred
years we shall be simply their household pets.

BURGE-LUBIN [_reacting buoyantly_] Not the least danger of it. I grant
you we leave the most troublesome part of the labor of the nation to
them. And a good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the
activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live
in than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To
ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right
from Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply
nowhere; and the real life of England is from Friday to Tuesday.

THE ARCHBISHOP. That is terribly true. In devising brainless amusements;
in pursuing them with enormous vigor, and taking them with eager
seriousness, our English people are the wonder of the world. They always
were. And it is just as well; for otherwise their sensuality would
become morbid and destroy them. What appals me is that their amuse