foundation. The world on the whole is a sad place, where we arrive
through the passions of others implanted in them by Nature, which,
although it cares nothing for individual death, is tender towards the
impulse of races of every sort to preserve their collective life.
Indeed the impulse is Nature, or at least its chief manifestation.
Consequently, whether we be gnats or elephants, or anything between and
beyond, even stars for aught I know, we must make the best of things as
they are, taking the good and the evil as they come and getting all we
can out of life until it leaves us, after which we need not trouble.
You had a good time for a little while and were happy in it; now you
are having a bad time and are wretched. Perhaps in the future, when your
mental balance has re-asserted itself, you will have other good times in
the afternoon of your days, and then follow twilight and the dark. That
is all there is to hope for, and we may as well look the thing in the
face. Only I confess, my dear fellow, that your experience convinces me
that marriage should be avoided at whatever inconvenience. Indeed I
have long wondered that anyone can take the responsibility of bringing
a child into the world. But probably nobody does in cold blood, except
misguided idiots like Bastin," he added. "He would have twenty, had not
his luck intervened."

"Then you believe in nothing, Friend," I said.

"Nothing, I am sorry to say, except what I see and my five senses
appreciate."

"You reject all possibility of miracle, for instance?"

"That depends on what you mean by miracle. Science shows us all kinds
of wonders which our great grandfathers would have called miracles, but
these are nothing but laws that we are beginning to understand. Give me
an instance."

"Well," I replied at hazard, "if you were assured by someone that a man
could live for a thousand years?"

"I should tell him that he was a fool or a liar, that is all. It is
impossible."

"Or that the same identity, spirit, animating principle--call it what
you will--can flit from body to body, say in successive ages? Or that
the dead can communicate with the living?"

"Convince me of any of these things, Arbuthnot, and mind you I desire
to be convinced, and I will take back every word I have said and walk
through Fulcombe in a white sheet proclaiming myself the fool. Now, I
must get off to the Cottage Hospital to cut out Widow Jenkins's varicose
veins. They are tangible and